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Clubhouse’s Inevitability
- seibelj 6y agoI would like a “party line” style app where moderators let people talk. Would be a lot of fun. Unfortunately normal people aren’t allowed into clubhouse (yet?) and I don’t give a shit enough to hassle someone for an invite code. But would be fun to login to a channel and be a blow hard. I listened to a podcast recently (Blocked and Reported) where they were critiquing how journalists have been advocating for fact checkers in every single clubhouse room. An app like this isn’t news that needs to be fact checked - it’s a bunch of strangers yammering on and talking out of their ass like you do at a bar. Some people are way too uptight.
- deeeeplearning 6y agoAm I missing something about this? Seems like it's just Davos in your living room for Silicon Valley types.
- ganstyles 6y agoIt was a little more like that before, say, summer 2020. Lots and lots of people have been onboarding in the last couple months, I assume because of the VC money and pressure to expand. At this time, it's less like you describe and more like "influencers" cannibalizing each other with constant rooms with a thousand or two people listening on "the success mindset" or "how to build a brand identity." I don't really log in anymore.
- Nowado 6y agoIt's literally more limited Discord trying to market itself into existence.
- Firehawke 6y agoThat was my thought, I was wondering if it did ANYTHING that isn't already in Mumble/Teamspeak/Ventrilo/Discord-- about the only thing I can come up with is that it's probably easier to set up for non-technical users (the one place Mumble/TS/Vent fall apart at) but even there I don't think Discord loses out on that.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoAs the article mentions, it's not limited to Silicon Valley types, but even if it were I don't know if there's really a "just" about Davos in your living room. A direct line to the thoughts of top Silicon Valley people is a pretty powerful pitch, no?
- heurist 6y agoOnly if you want to pipe their words directly into your brain with no opportunity to send yours back to them. I generally decline such one-way offers.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI'm not really sure how to respond to that. You don't read books or watch Youtube?
- heurist 6y agoBooks yes, youtube no, except the occasional funny animal/baby video with my wife. Even books need to meet an expected quality threshold before I elect to dedicate tens of hours of my attention, and I am willing to grant it because the thousands of hours or years worth of thought put into a book are often worth the brain space consumption trade-off. I try to be very selective in the content I consume, with exceptions for pure entertainment when I need it.
- sumanthvepa 6y agoAnd that’s what I find compelling about it. I’ve never been to Davos or worked in Silicon Valley, yet I felt like I was in that environment. I don’t expect it will last. But it felt nice.
- fullshark 6y agoThat sounds more interesting than what it's going to become: a massive collection of literal echo chambers.
- hahahahe 6y agoSo artificial exclusivity all over again. We tried this for the past decade.
- tchalla 6y ago> Make no mistake, most of these conversations will be terrible. That, though, is the case for all user-generated content. The key for Clubhouse will be in honing its algorithms so that every time a listener opens the app they are presented with a conversation that is interesting to them. This is the other area where podcasts miss the mark: it is amazing to have so much choice, but all too often that choice is paralyzing; sometimes — a lot of times! — users just want to scroll their Twitter feed instead of reading a long blog post, or click through Stories or swipe TikToks, and Clubhouse is poised to provide the same mindless escapism for background audio. This seems to be a good nutshell of Clubhouse and it's popularity.
- stedaniels 6y ago> The key for Clubhouse will be in honing its algorithms so that every time a listener opens the app they are presented with a conversation that is interesting to them. I think Netflix and YouTube have proven how hard this is. Watch a couple of the wrong shows and you a doomed forever it seems. It's a bit like Echo Chambers too. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_chamber_(media) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_chamber_(media)
- alangibson 6y agoYoutube is astonishingly bad. I watched a Jordan Peterson talk just to see what all the fuss is about and now there's at least a clip of him in damn near every video Youtube recommends. And this is despite me actually watching aerospace related videos almost exclusively.
- detaro 6y agoif you are logged in, you can go to your watch history and delete the entry for it, that does something to get it out of the algorithm. But yes, YT really likes to latch onto you watching a single thing once.
- alangibson 6y ago
- genpfault 6y ago> Clubhouse is an invitation-only audio-chat social networking app launched in 2020 by software developers Alpha Exploration Co. As of December 2020, it was valued at nearly $100 million. On January 21, 2021, the valuation hit one billion US dollars.[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clubhouse_(app) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clubhouse_(app)
- thedudeabides5 6y ago”Further, SIO has determined that a user’s unique Clubhouse ID number and chatroom ID are transmitted in plaintext, and Agora would likely have access to users’ raw audio, potentially providing access to the Chinese government.”
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- rsync 6y agoI'm curious as to how this happens - are app comms not SSL ? I never gave it much thought but I assumed that, like the adoption of SSL everywhere for websites, all apps spoke only SSL ... does the app store not enforce this ?
- tootie 6y agoPile this on to the list of digital zeitgeists I don't understand.
- alangibson 6y agoIt's weird this article talks so much about podcasts but doesn't mention Patreon. It's a major, often primary, source of revenue for the most interesting podcasts I listen to.
- solosoyokaze 6y agoI find pure audio to be the least appealing format to absorb information from. It's simultaneously distracting yet non-engaging. If I want to learn something new, print or video work best for me. Print if the concept is information based. Video if it's technique based. Just like I don't listen to podcasts, I can't imagine sitting around listening to people talk about things with no visuals. I'm not even sure when I would slot that into my day, even if I wanted to.
- faitswulff 6y ago> I'm not even sure when I would slot that into my day, even if I wanted to. Personally speaking, I listen while walking, running, or driving.
- Ma8ee 6y agoAudio has the advantage that you can listen while walking, working out, or cleaning up the kitchen. Since I got kids it’s the only way I manage to consume any literature.
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- dustinmoris 6y agoI don’t see the appeal of yet another anti-social media app. I don’t know, maybe it’s me, but I’m thinking even if I was a lonely cat lady/guy I’d not need yet another crappy app on top of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat or TikTok to not feel like a lonely depressed human. If I really need to take my mind off my lonely miserable life then I can already listen to a million podcasts or literally turn myself into a binge watching zombie staring at Netflix all day so I don’t have to realise what a fucking loser I am that I need an app to meet and talk to random people. Even if I was that person, I’d probably lose interest in Clubhouse as soon as the pandemic is over and I can see my shrink again.
- Cederfjard 6y agoThis rant makes no sense to me. How is it anti-social to literally talk to people?
- dustinmoris 6y agoIt’s not a rant. Clubhouse is a platform for wannabes and losers who like to listen to wannabes. My brutal honesty is not a rant, just just an unfiltered summary of Clubhouse and I don’t see the appeal to people who have a real social life.
- Cederfjard 6y agoMy wife is on it sometimes, she goes on groups with other people and converses about various topics. It seems quite social to me, and she has an extensive ”real” social life, too. I think your attempt to boil down the essence of the app to your ”summary” is flawed. Also, just because something is ”brutal honesty” doesn’t mean it isn’t also a rant, nor that it’s the truth.
- rvz 6y agoDidn't the people who were on Facebook at the time say this about Twitter that it was for 'losers' and yet here we are. But I agree too. There's nothing special about Clubhouse expect that it is super-hyped by the VCs, media and the techies as the next big thing and I'm not convinced.
- vyrotek 6y ago> Make no mistake, most of these conversations will be terrible. That, though, is the case for all user-generated content. My perception is that Clubhouse is that it's yet-another amplifier for the group of folks who already have a large following and are able to produce quality content. Listening to anything long-form and live risks being a huge waste of time. Audiences are willing to listen to well-known people because it has a higher chance of being interesting at all. Unfortunately, the feedback I've heard is that the meetings hosted by the rest of the not-so well-known community have been generally terrible. I think people underestimate power of async communication and how it powers discoverability. There's too much noise out there already and very little time to filter it out to discover new content. Especially when the content is only produced live. Growing a YouTube/Podcast audience and growing a Clubhouse audience are going to be very different challenges. I'm also unconvinced that this is a winner-take-all space. My understanding is that the technology moat here is very narrow compared to what it takes to run YouTube, Twitch, etc. I've already seen several interesting hacks put together by individuals with their own twist to this space. That said, I'd really like to see the community stop claiming that "Clubhouse will be bigger than X platform!" such as Twitter and LinkedIn.
- newsclues 6y agoThe question I’m left with is, will Clubhouse be able to scale building communities?
- dehrmann 6y agoThis is a very underappreciated part of scaling community-oriented platforms with user-generated content.
- tootie 6y agoI think another important point being missed is how hard it is to create compelling improvised content. Youtube and Tiktok are amateur productions but the successful creators are still writing and editing. Conversations are going to meander and the absolute worst offense possible for this kind of medium is being boring.
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- maxehmookau 6y agoI gave clubhouse a go and found it super boring. Lots of self-important people talking about why they're important. It feels like the reason I no longer listen to live radio. Why would I let someone else dictate what I listen to when there's plenty of on-demand content available 24/7?
- seattle_spring 6y ago> Lots of self-important people talking about why they're important Taking a page from the LinkedIn playbook
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y agoSame here, gave it a try and it's pretty much just a bubble builder for celebrities, not much else. What I really don't understand is people trying to build a connection to podcasts? Why? Just because it's audio too? The reason I enjoy podcasts is that I get to enjoy specific topics (or field specific news) from a list of sources I curate myself. I have show notes, know roughly what I get into with an episode, and get to pause and rewind, and that is just a part of it.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI'm not sure that's a universal experience. One of the most popular podcasts is Joe Rogan's, where each episode is just him talking to a random guest about a random thing, and that kind of show seems like it'd translate pretty straightforwardly to Clubhouse. I can't say I've ever wanted to rewind Rogan or follow along with show notes.
- pjc50 6y ago> trying to build a connection The comparison to podcasts is to be "the thing that you listen to while doing something else".
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- kmfrk 6y ago
- iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y agoI am curious to try it (android user so I have to wait) but I worry that it will have a steep curve into mass market banality. The idea of hearing / participating in an unscripted chat with a small close knit group sounds cool. But as soon as lots of people are paying attention, things will get scripted, content will get anodyne enough to avoid offending anyone and so will be uninteresting, etc. It will be interesting to see if they can find a way to scale while remaining authentic and providing something not available on every other kind of media.
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- heurist 6y agoOn one hand, I get it, especially in the covid era when social interaction is curtailed. On the other, I am really damn tired of hearing about it. It seems like Clubhouse's membership is comprised of people who either want to be followers or influencers, neither of whom I am all that interested in meeting or hearing talk for several hours. And the intention is apparently to replace or supplement a podcast diet, but I have yet to find a podcast that is more valuable to me than audiobooks. The only live speakers I've seen and learned anything from were academics. Maybe they are on Clubhouse or will be eventually? I haven't used it so maybe I'm missing something.
- ThomPete 6y agoClubhouse is the most amazing thing that happened to social MEDIA. Its a much better way to discuss even difficult subjects because it keeps most people much more humble and provide the ability to much better deal with conflict and disagreements. Most social media isnt builtt for disagreements, audio definitely is. The quality of some of these rooms like the Small Steps Giant Leaps about space technology and VC is amazing. Or the AI/ML room which goes on for days is extreme informative. Dont be a hater, try it out and DM me if you want tricks for how to curate your feed.
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoSmall Steps Giant Leaps is great!!
- amoorthy 6y agoCurious - what are your tricks to curate a good feed?
- nindalf 6y agoI think my tech predictions are required reading for everyone based on how frequently I’m wrong. Just yesterday I said “what’s so great about Clubhouse, I don’t see the point”. By doing so I think I virtually guaranteed it’s success. Jokes aside, Ben’s argument here seems solid. It will depend on them solving discovery as well as TikTok did but they could be huge if they manage it.
- cm2012 6y agoI am a strong sell on ClubHouse at a $2b valuation. Just like Medium and Quora, once the masses are allowed on, the noise will get too high and the signal will get lost.
- enos_feedler 6y agoTwitter is full of noise yet somehow I get decent enough signal to be a daily active user. Does Clubhouse achieve this independently or is this a hard problem and Twitter could clone Clubhouse features and somehow solve this problem?
- cm2012 6y agoTwitter already cloned Clubhouse last week: https://onezero.medium.com/the-case-for-twitter-spaces-b57b64bca3c2 https://onezero.medium.com/the-case-for-twitter-spaces-b57b6...
- minimaxir 6y agoClubhouse is the first app in awhile that somehow gives me negative FOMO.
- viklove 6y agoJOYO: Joy of missing out
- dustinmoris 6y agoJOMO then?
- thaumasiotes 6y agoNah, the Y stands for "missing". ;D
- mtalantikite 6y agoI'd really like to see what their engagement and retention numbers are, because after a few days on Clubhouse I just deleted the app. Just a bunch of nonsense conversations, many of which were led by people that sell the snake-oil of how to become successful in business and life, whereas their major accomplishment seems to be being known for selling that snake-oil. Sometimes there was a random celebrity talking about things they couldn't speak all that eloquently about (reminded me of the classic Dave Chappelle "I want some answers that Ja Rule might not have right now" [1]). At least Twitter and Instagram felt fun when they started. Clubhouse just felt boring. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo-ddYhXAZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo-ddYhXAZc
- tonetheman 6y agoClubhouse is just that a club. Where you are not invited. Maybe once it opens up to everyone.
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- harryf 6y agoFirst time I went on Clubhouse, first got in a room with some Silicon Valley types talking about how to grow your startup. I get enough of that content so left to explore further and found a room with some African Americans discussing the best way to "snort crack from a booty hole". Perhaps it's my sense of humour but I laughed my head off and was immediately hooked. Felt like the Internet of the "good old days". Also I'm comfortable talking on voice from doing a podcast. Actually I usually hook up my Rødecaster Pro for better quality audio. Some random tips I've found make Clubhouse more entertaining... - Follow lots of people - don't be like Twitter, Instagram etc. trying to have more followers than follows. The more people you follow, the more diverse your room suggestions become - From the home screen of the app, scroll down and find the little "Explore" button ... this will take you to more rooms. Smaller rooms tend to be lower down - If you want to get involved in a discussion, go to the smaller rooms - Can be interesting to tap on the profile of who "Nominated" someone... and keep tapping until you get to the center of the graph. This is an interesting take on social graphs I think (which I'm guessing they will disable) - Most of all, get out of your comfort zone, when it comes to your normal interests / ethnicity etc. It's very low friction to talk to anyone and people are largely polite. It's a great to get to know groups of people you'd otherwise avoid and get new perspectives. If you want to connect hit me up on @harryfcks in the app.
- scotuswroteus 6y agonot sure why their race matters
- harryf 6y agoIt doesn’t it’s just that for me, living in Zürich Switzerland, it’s a type of conversation I would never get to hear / be part of
- whymauri 6y agoI'll give my thoughts. Although the wording seems clunky at first, the GP is actually identifying something really important about the growth of Clubhouse as a platform. Similar to Twitter, which has Black Twitter [0], Latino Twitter, etc, it seems that Clubhouse will also build these kinds of communities. When a chief concern about Clubhouse is lack of diversity, I think this is pretty meaningful. What I'm more interested in seeing though, is if Clubhouse can also incorporate class diversity without betraying its brand of exclusivity. Note: I'm not on Clubhouse and don't want to be. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Twitter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Twitter
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- serial_dev 6y agoI don't understand the hype, I gotta be honest. I enjoy podcasts and audiobooks, too. I listen to technical and political podcasts regularly, and sometimes I try other genres when I don't feel like learning or getting disappointed by politics. I heard people talking about Clubhouse, they were all like "wow, amazing, revolutionary". They told me I would need to watch my screen time, because they are 10 hours a day on Clubhouse. I asked them to explain to me why they enjoy it, I didn't get it but wanted to try anyway. I got an invite, and tried the app. What a disappointment that was, I tried to follow interesting people and content, checked out what my friends were following, listened in on multiple rooms, stayed long and hoped something worthwhile would happen, but no, nothing really happened. Boring content, from people who are mostly neither funny, nor insightful (which is fine, most people are not extraordinary, it's not a personal attack or something, it's just that the top "talkers" already rose to the top via TV shows and podcasts). The constant reminders on LinkedIn about past discussions on the platform that I would be interested in is even more annoying, as I can't just open the talks later. I'm sure there are good conversations there but the noise to signal (value) ratio at clubhouse is just very very low.
- mgh2 6y agoThere are many uses cases, but one of them *might be as a potential solution to current social media polarization. Imagine putting radical liberals and conservatives or loyal Taiwanese and Chinese in the same room AND be able to participate in the discussion. The value Clubhouse brings is the ability to start a dialogue to understand the other side that we are often blinded from - empathy through conversation from multiple viewpoints. Civil discussions that were never possible can now be (abuses are quickly reported and kicked out). Of course we will have to see the long term repercussions of this technology that only time can tell.
- volkk 6y ago> empathy through conversation. "Let's have a talk" why is it that clubhouse will do anything differently than what a FB post does? AKA devolve into mindless attacks in the comments sections about the way you look in your profile pic, your race/ethnicity, etc. is the difference simply..because it's voice? i think it's naive to think this is some new mindblowing tech considering a few points: a. it's invite only b. it's populated by tech oriented people. the only people that benefit from this are yuppies and already well off people. i want to hear opinions from the lower class too which i can guarantee are 100% not on clubhouse and are instead busy dealing with real life problems instead of talking about them on some VC backed app touted as the greatest revolution by mostly vapid social media sites (read: linkedin, producthunt, etc) i realize its a pessimistic POV but at this point in my life and all my years in tech..i'm tired of hearing how some random social media app is going to change the world for the better again and again. but also, i would LOVE to be proved wrong one day.
- ChaitanyaSai 6y agoYou can make pretty much the same argument for Chatroulette (yeah, yeah, minus the oh, but audio allows us to multi-task). I am surprised Ben Thompson of all people thinks the necessity to be live is a plus. Async consumption (sitting on the potty, commute, smoke break, in bed scrolling yourself to sleep) is where your tiktoks and snaps and grams get consumed. The other thing that makes me willing to wager this goes the Chatroulette and Google Plus way is the male skew. I'd also like to coin a neologism for the inevitable narcisstic bloviation that will come to flood Clubhouse -- micdics
- enos_feedler 6y agoThe world is not exclusively asynchronous. There are lots of use cases centered on live, especially around events. As Ben Thompson mentioned Locker Room which is Clubhouse for sports. I think live is a great format for these and no surprise it replicates live talk radio which has been around since the 1920s.
- ChaitanyaSai 6y agoAgree there are quite a few events that are live, but not enough for the next-big-social-platform. Also agree online version of live talk radio can and will happen. Just don't see that slice being big enough for it to be anything more than live podcasts. How do audiences scale? How do conversations scale? With Twitter, Instagram, I shallow-follow a few hundred people. What's the equivalent here? Also, async media allows me to skip skip skim skip. What do I do here? Can I drop in on a conversation and quickly get a sense of quality? Yes, live is a great format for certain things, but not big enough to for Clubhouse to be live only and scale to something like the other big ones
- enos_feedler 6y agoImagine if I turned on my "radio" and it always was playing the most personally relevant live event happening in the world at that moment. This could be a live podcast, it could be a live sports game. It could be a conference talk from a programming languages technical conference talk for a language I use regularly. I would challenge the notion of "quite a few events that are live" to say that I could fill my day 24/7 with rich, live content. The problem right now is connecting me with it. I am missing so much wonderful live content that I would enjoy as I type this. Who is surfacing it to me? When I turn on my "radio" right now, it has no idea what I want.
- Sodman 6y agoOnce clubhouse loses its exclusivity and becomes generally available, where will they be at? It's essentially just a discord clone with better marketing and hype. Or, in its most common format of 1-3 people talking and 1000s listening, it's basically FM radio. Is that enough for it to be widely successful (the "next social media platform")? I'm not convinced. The biggest features it's got going for it once it hits GA, are that it's ephemeral and that it's live. There are several other platforms with decent UX already providing these USPs, also for free. I can see this being a live-streaming broadcast service for celebrities and influencers who already have big audiences, but not much more than that.
- sjg007 6y agoThe FM radio thing is apt. My guess would be it also has a way to manage users and call ins. So instead of Tweet this radio personality you can log in real time. Not sure if measuring interactivity is a good thing here though.
- eat_veggies 6y agoEvery "new" technology is always ushered in with the language of inevitability, which tautologically justifies its existence -- it's been "pulled into existence," a side-effect of progress, "make some thing people want," etc. etc. I quote at length from Raymond Williams's study Television published in 1974 (!) > The physical fact of instant transmission, as a technical possibility, has been uncritically raised to a social fact, without any pause to notice that virtually all such transmission is at once selected and controlled by existing social authorities [...] > If the effect of the medium is the same, whoever controls or uses it, and whatever apparent content he may try to insert, then we can forget ordinary political and cultural argument and let the technology run itself. It is hardly surprising that this conclusion has been welcomed by the 'media-men' of the existing institutions [...] > The model can be related to history only by endless retrospect, in which by selection such a process can be generalised or demonstrated. Characteristically, in such a model, there will be no more history: a culminating age has arrived. MS Paint diagrams give the gloss of spontaneity; the big goofy arrows tell a version of history reduced to simple cause and effect; the easy steps "Democratization, Aggregation, Transformation" flatten it into a linear treadmill. Clubhouse becomes an overdetermined effect rather than something deliberately built -- it's another stop on the three-step treadmill that's coming whether you like it or not (so get your investment dollars in now). Under this ideology, technology is something that happens to us. But as Nowaldo says, it is "trying to market itself into existence" [1] and appeals to inevitability are exactly how they do it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26144055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26144055
- spicyramen 6y agoI have seen some technical people discussing technology such as ML, that may be interesting? But i can do the same with youtube, podcasts, etc. Is that only in iphone?
- Ceezy 6y agoStrategy retrospectively is easy...
- baxtr 6y agoI got maybe 10 min of value after spending 10 hours on clubhouse. I am pretty much done with it. And thus, I really need to be very blunt about this: I hate Clubhouse. It’s full of self-loving people who already have a huge audience somewhere else and now found a new way to recruit even more followers. Sorry for being so negative about something which I believe is actually innovative.
- ketamine__ 6y agoIs it a bit better than Twitter? On Twitter influencers only interact with other influencers. If you don't have a large following but post an insightful comment you're lucky to get a like.
- nowherebeen 6y agoI suspect the people that love Twitter will love Clubhouse as well. As other commenters already mentioned, it’s geared towards those that are slightly self important.
- jimkleiber 6y agoAnd I think that's OK. For some people, they hate reading and writing or recording video or editing audio, so CH can provide a platform for some people who love being in vocal group discussions, whether hosting, speaking, or even listening, and can bring lots to that segment. I personally love to read things because I think I can read rather fast and I have friends who hated even text messages, preferring voice notes, because they don't want to read/type so much. I also agree there's the social dynamics you mention, just think the communication format appeals to some more than others.
- ccsnags 6y agoClubhouse interests me. I don’t use social media like twitter, ig, facebook and don’t miss them. Clubhouse seems more interesting than the others. It reminds me of one of my favorite things to do on VRChat, making drum circles and singing songs. Just connecting with people for the sake of it. Waiting on an invite though. I’d love to check it out.
- throwawayy1112 6y agoYea Clubhouse should be called Madhouse because it's a bunch of exclusive pseudo-intellectual narcissists huffing their own farts.
- perseusprime11 6y agoI find Reddit more engaging than Clubhouse.
- cblconfederate 6y agoThe other day it was Tyler cowen promoting it. Feels like a paid campaign to me. It'slike Quora, but with audio? https://www.bloombergquint.com/amp/gadfly/clubhouse-success-shows-niceness-can-exist-on-social-media https://www.bloombergquint.com/amp/gadfly/clubhouse-success-...
- max_ 6y agoHow is clubhouse different from discord?
- Fordec 6y agoVC shilling on twitter
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoI joined the South Asian Club and every evening, there is a music session. I was pleasantly surprised to find people from all over south Asian..Indians, Pakistanis and bangaladesh appearing to perform..instrumentals and vocal. And in multiple languages too. My absolute fav part of clubhouse. I am trained in Carnatic classical music and now I want to learn Hindustani style. The members are of different ages and the young people are a delight. They are polite and at different skill levels. So..it has massively revived and boosted and expanded my music universe. Most South Asians would know what an Antakshari session means...basically this clubhouse room is like that. Right now, I am in a room where people are part of 2 minute debates. Pro and against debaters randomly assigned. The topic now is: “Do aliens exist?” Fun! The big rooms can be difficult to navigate and engage if one doesn’t know how to time oneself without interrupting. Because we don’t see each other. There is tons of security issues. But that’s probably why this is still beta. For now, I listen a lot more than I contribute. It is a ‘real identity’ service. Your phone number and your real voice is on the server. There is no downvoting(ahem) but there is self moderation. The best part is one can leave if they dislike a discussion and one won’t be heard if they are disruptive if the moderator so decides. No public shaming. Just a lack of platform for unpalatable views(from the room moderators’ POV). I think this might well become the most well behaved social media we have seen in a while on the interwebs.
- JumpCrisscross 6y agoAndreessen is really pumping the PR on this app. Reminds me of Kleiner (I think?) and Bloom Energy.
- ucm_edge 6y agoI do see some value in Clubhouse. My spouse has been using it to hold open conferences with other professors, but they're seeding the room with a number of pre screened academics, their grad students, postdocs, etc. Then it's open for those that want to drop it. It's nothing you couldn't have done with Ventrilo way back in the early 2000s, but I guess CH has a brand and people just browsing. It also seems inevitable though that their kind of content will remain a minority and it comes down to if CH will offer you the discover tools you need to weed through all the crap to find the discussion room on the topic you personally give a shit about. Also apparently a bunch of top ranked academics got to hear me curse bilingually because my spouse was talking and rolled into the kitchen right as the drain hose came off the garbage disposal and dumped dirty water on my face. Loving the new garbage disposal though.
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- ketamine__ 6y ago> but they're seeding the room with a number of pre screened academics, their grad students, postdocs, etc. And only those that have iPhones?
- m4tthumphrey 6y agoSo I hadn't heard of Clubhouse before so I googled it. I didnt even click the link and Google told me; > Clubhouse is an invitation-only audio-chat social networking app launched in 2020 by software developers Alpha Exploration Co. As of December 2020, it was valued at nearly $100 million. On January 21, 2021, the valuation hit one billion US dollars. $100m to $1b value increase in a month? What happened?
- carlosdp 6y ago"As of" doesn't mean they raised the previous round in December. Pretty sure their previous round was like a year ago.
- ayewo 6y agoHere's a more detailed take on CH's growth: Clubhouse has 6 million registered users, up from 600,000 in December 2020. Clubhouse is currently valued at $1 billion (up from $100 million in May 2020) Clubhouse has raised over $10 million to date. Over 180 organizations and venture capitalists have invested in Clubhouse to date. With its $1 billion valuation, Clubhouse is now a Unicorn startup, joining the ranks of Uber and AirBnb. Clubhouse is currently ranked #5 in the App Store under the “Social Networking” category. Clubhouse officially launched in April 2020. Source: https://backlinko.com/clubhouse-users https://backlinko.com/clubhouse-users
- looneyxp 6y agoClubhouse is just discord rooms for "Gurus"
- looneyxp 6y agoClubhouse is just Discord rooms for "Gurus"
- allknowingfrog 6y agoI was very confused until I realized that this is not about the project management solution (https://clubhouse.io/ https://clubhouse.io/). Did someone forget to register a trademark? I get that these are separate industries, but the potential for confusion seems to exist. I couldn't start an audio platform and call it "GitHub"...could I?
- k__ 6y agoHow? It's basically Discord/TeamSpeak.
- AzzieElbab 6y agoI am very much an introvert but under the lockdowns I would give my left eye for random conversations with smart people, not being forced to walk on the eggshells is a big plus too
- Chirael 6y agoI signed up and followed a few people and then... what now? The few things that are suggested to me when I log in aren't interesting, so I just shut the app. I've opened it a few times and had the same experience, so unless someone tells me about something specific I need to sign on to Clubhouse for, I don't see the need to keep opening it.
- diamondhands 6y agoComparing businesses/companies to meme stocks is the future, no doubt. Clubhouse is definitely inevitable, but I think the reason some people think it's overhyped is due to the incredulity of its popularity over it being simply a feature. Like, if someone built iMessage, for instance, and the whole world responding like the iPhone just launched. I think it just goes to show how low our collective human bar for real magic has fallen. Culture comes first, and I've never seen more beautiful memes than what the guys over at lot2046.com have been building (especially the recent update to their ark 1 trailer). Only time will tell when humanity will grow to understand how deep magic can go, and maybe respond more objectively to CH, which is just a feature. It answers the What as much as any billion dollar features companies do, like Uber, for instance. What we use to share ideas. What we use to hitch a ride. But the Why, that's a magic I think is largely absent nowadays. Why are we here? Who are we? Do you guys know any companies out there pursuing that in its crosshairs instead of simply scaling features?
- riversflow 6y agoWhat is going on with this article? Usually I expect really well thought out pieces from Stratechery. Clubhouse definitely has marketing down I guess. But in the article there is literally not a single mention of Discord, why not? Discord has been providing me the exact experience described here. I’ve had really interesting conversations with strangers on Discord, people are much more civil in disagreeing if it’s not text based! And what about twitch, “Just chatting” is definitely a competing product here in the 1 to many category.
- craigds 6y agoI got really confused when this didnt start talking about tickets and epics and project management ( https://clubhouse.io/ https://clubhouse.io/ )
- TedShiller 6y agoThe problem with Clubhouse that Clubhouse doesn’t want to admit is that it’s all about who’s talking. Nobody cares who’s listening.
- latchkey 6y ago1. ToS violation to record and publish shows without 'written' consent of all the people in the room (which is effectively not enforceable) 2. iOS only 3. Invite only 4. Not ADA compliant (leaves out deaf folks) 5. Buggy 6. Centralized 7. You can't easily delete your account I personally tried it and deleted it. No thanks.
- cma 6y ago> ToS violation to record and publish shows without 'written' consent of all the people in the room (which is effectively not enforceable) That seems to provide an extreme means of selective enforcement.
- latchkey 6y agoIn my eyes, the workaround is simple. At the beginning of a session, tell everyone you're recording and give them a link to sign consent form and ask anyone who doesn't to leave the room. By staying, they implicitly agree. There is also local jurisdiction laws around this too which make it impossible to cover all cases. I'm not a lawyer of course, but it seems like a valid defense at least.
- nowherebeen 6y ago8. Requires giving them access and uploading your contact list to invite friends.
- latchkey 6y agoI never uploaded my contacts, nor would I have. But it is highly encouraged by the app, for sure. Of course it is. It builds their social graph. Having built a dating site just before Tinder launched, that only used FB for auth, we had hundreds of millions of connections within weeks. It was a trove of data as we could sort matches based on it on the theory that people in your 'friend circle' are more likely to match with. Probably good that the site didn't last due to founder issues.
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- jariel 6y agoThis feels like a fad not a trend, but it's hard to say. They could adapt in some way. Twitter seemed useless at first, but once you realize the voice it gives a small class of people - and - that the media would use it incessantly and addictively - then you realize why it sticks. Snapchat settles into chat. WhatsApp is into 'I don't have to pay SMS in Brazil etc. TikTok - is so ridiculously addictive it remains to be seen, but I'm wary that it will actually have staying power. The private wave has hit so hard with Clubhouse you have to think they are going to push it hard, and with a major media push this will get really big before anything else. Like every pod at CES having a Clubhouse. A Clubhouse with every salesforce account etc. There's an opportunity for it to become a de-facto live streaming platform for audio.
- mindfulplay 6y agoI am a bit appalled by the diluting nature of 'tech' in these newfound tech companies. This doesn't sound like a tech company: more like what Quibi did as a media company but thought of itself as a tech company. At least with Uber and AirBnB you could excuse such tech company label (even though they are mostly legal-oriented companies with a fake tech company air). You know you are in a bubble when a live audio podcast startup passes for a tech company and has too much hype built around it.
- thewarrior 6y agoAnd the company doesn’t even build the audio broadcast bits but just wraps a third party SaaS SDK. Shows how much of success is connections and marketing.
- LordAtlas 6y agoDo you know which SaaS they use? Idle curiosity.
- chanmad29 6y agoUber and AirBnB are just legal companies? Never saw it that way, but that said, would those labels not easily apply to FANG as well? Half of the effort is spent on fighting lawsuits that take aim on their market positions.
- Kiro 6y agoNot a fan of the routine anecdotal comments on Hacker News every time something blows up. We saw the same with Snapchat. Clubhouse is obviously popular and the article makes a good case why that is. Isn't that more interesting to discuss than "tried it, don't understand the hype"?
- asimjalis 6y agoI find 10-50 person rooms pretty valuable. Basically rooms where I can join the conversation, ask questions, comment on other people’s questions. They have a dinner party vibe. I had a random conversation with guy who creates and sells Shopify apps, woman who teaches a sales technique that avoids asking questions, guy who explained how to use origin stories in product pitches. Pretty good return on investment so far.
- bigpumpkin 6y ago2021: Clubhouse: $100 million to $1 Billion valuation Agora: $4 Billion to $10 Billion valuation What does Agora offer that is better than its alternatives?
- dexter89_kp3 6y agoClubhouse has been a mixed bag for me. I love some of the regular shows there like GoodTimes, deep learning research review hosted by Andrej Karpathy etc. When I step into smaller rooms, the signal to noise ratio decreases (on topics I care about). I felt clubhouse to be more conversational than podcasts (which are often a Q&A format). It also allow new people to participate, ask questions. Exploration of topics and rooms is pretty hard currently. How do you discover interesting people and conversations? For me it has mostly been twitter, which is non-optimal. My second big pain point has been the FOMO nature of it. I would ideally like to consume content on my time and schedule not the other way around.
- asimjalis 6y agoMy strategy for finding interesting conversations is to follow people I meet that I find interesting. The algorithm seems to be pretty good at showing me conversations involving people I follow, which tend to be interesting.
- asimjalis 6y agoI have a suspicion people who don’t like Clubhouse landed in the wrong rooms. My recommendation would be to explore different rooms, especially smaller rooms with < 50 people.
- strin 6y agoI wonder how clubhouse would monetize its traffic. most social networks had to make the advertisement presented in similar ways to the content, e.g. twitter, instagram, tiktok. but I can't imagine clicking on and listen to a "conversation" that advertises a product...
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- jarjoura 6y agoWhy is no one concerned this is going to become a platform for spreading misinformation? The way a conversation turns into a set of people who become the authority on a topic, vs. the followers is just way too easy. It's sort of like Quora back at the beginning. It also requires a huge time commitment that makes sense in this Covid world that once people want to get out and travel, or just return to normal meetups, the platform will either shift to a lonely class of people, or dry up completely.
- nitwit005 6y ago> The key for Clubhouse will be in honing its algorithms so that every time a listener opens the app they are presented with a conversation that is interesting to them. If they had no competition that would make sense, but there are quite a few platforms trying to recommend audio content to people as-is. The current podcasts I listen to I found through YouTube. I assume they had a presence there as that's where their audience looked to find content.
- Sol- 6y ago> Clubhouse is far better suited than podcasts to discuss events as they are happening, or immediately afterwards Seems like an anti-feature. Why would I want to listen to half-informed takes on current events which will be outdated soon after? Inherently ephemeral stuff like sports commentary I could understand at least, perhaps that's really the only sensible use case. But I guess that's asking the wrong question anyway - all these platforms are optimized for wasting your time, after all.
- ketamine__ 6y agoIsn't that the purpose of 24 hour news streams like CNN?
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- flixic 6y agoMoments after Tesla's purchase of 1.5B of Bitcoin was announced, I opened Clubhouse, and sure enough, at the top was a pretty massive room discussing the move. Quality of information wasn't remarkable, but as a "radio show on demand" it was very entertaining.
- Kiro 6y agoWhy is sports commentary different? I love watching Twitch streams commenting real world events live.
- helen___keller 6y agoI'm not going to say Clubhouse is going to fail, because I'm not the target audience now and I won't be later either, so how would I know. What I will say is that whatever appeal Clubhouse purportedly has now at a $1B valuation, such as rubbing virtual elbows with the elite, is not going to scale to a $100B valuation. Navigating the process of becoming mass-market is the key.
- swyx 6y agoFor those who are Clubhouse haters and don't get it - I did a 180 on it recently: https://www.swyx.io/clubhouse-hate/ https://www.swyx.io/clubhouse-hate/ Gotten some good shoutouts on this one, so it may help with understanding why it is doing well when other apps seem to be feature superior to it. I've made my own "code of ethics" when it comes to how I embrace this trend at arms length.
- thundergolfer 6y agoI think your “some people don’t... but most people do” angle is correct. There’s quite a few negative comments in this thread, but HN posters are not at all representative of “the masses”.
- dayvid 6y agoI really hope they have a record with playback at higher speed/skip speaker function. I don’t know if it will hurt their growth at this point, but it would make Clubhouse usable for me. Otherwise, there’s too much noise for the value of the signal
- alliao 6y agoAgora have all the data minus all the liability! Agora being a Chinese company will have to comply with Chinese laws so yeah, no thanks.
- 8bitsrule 6y agoI wouldn't want to be part of any Clubhouse that'd have me as a member.
- Mobleysoft 6y agoI just wish someone would invite me. It's the cool kids table all over again, 20 years after the utter joy of "I'll never have to deal with this again". I am perfectly content running my 1 man consulting practice, researching all of the world's knowledge for that break through insight that tells me what to invent. Alone. But now, there's knowledge that's off limits to me. Lex Fridman talking to Elon Musk about God knows what. And all of it, lost to me forever, because I never quite got the hang of knowing people. Someone tell me I'm not missing anything. That my time is better spent focusing on the work that moves my needle rather than communing with...people.
- jorl17 6y agoI am extremely interested in finding out if/when we'll reach "Eternal September" mass usage in Clubhouse. Make your bets!
- gimme_treefiddy 6y agoI don’t get why they don’t have an android app yet. Is it part of maintaining exclusivity, or does building an android app that challenging, especially for something like clubhouse.
- Traster 6y agoIt's going to be very interesting to see how clubhouse manages the toxic environment that gets created on all social media. It's one thing to go on reddit and post neo-nazi content - it's text based and it's fairly easy to remove and ban. On Clubhouse it's much more ephemeral, what do you do when a group of people rile themselves up into a frenzy and start harassing people? What happens when a bunch of tech bros start to revive gamergate and harass female reporters about "ethics in journalism"? So far the answer seems to be "Hope no one notices" which is a strategy about a decade out of date.
- vlucas 6y agoI wrote a blog post about something similar. I view Clubhouse as the future of talk radio: https://vancelucas.com/blog/clubhouse-is-the-future-of-talk-radio/ https://vancelucas.com/blog/clubhouse-is-the-future-of-talk-...
- unionpivo 6y agoDo they even plan android release or will it stay on IOS?
- raindropm 6y agoI try it today, and give it up so quickly. I'm tired. Maybe it's not bad, my friends seems to like it. Open the app first time, you'll be greet by screen that let you choose which topics you're interested and who you want to follow. I just can't bring myself to choose, because I suddenly feel "Is this yet another "productive" things I have to do? Just thinking about it make me tired already. I have new books I bought lying around that I hardly touch, Pocket article that I rarely read(yet I save it everyday) Tutorial video I plan to watch, etc. My answer to myself is what I need is "quiet" time, not another channel to bombard the information(no matter how good it is)in your head. The information is overloaded already. Again, some people seems to like it, good for them then.(Anyway, I like their app icon. :)