> Clubhouse doesn’t do anything all that innovative (what can it do that Discord can’t?) and the pitch isn’t even that unique. The key to success was that they

> Clubhouse doesn’t do anything all that innovative (what can it do that Discord can’t?) and the pitch isn’t even that unique. The key to success was that they got the right VCs. Those VCs use it, get their friends to use it, pull some strings to get celebrities to pop in. It becomes successful but in this really weird way where once you scratch beneath the surface there’s not actually anything there. I think that’s why there’s so much weird grifty content on there. I used to feel this way about Twitter, Instagram, etc: basically every post-Facebook social network that fundamentally implemented a subset of Facebook functionality. I eventually came around to the notion that the initial conditions of a social network are incredibly important for establishing the community and its norms, which is where most of the value resides. The norms[1] governing what one posts about, the type of people you expect to find, even the Overton Window of what's expressible on a network without getting downvoted/harassed/suspended all depend on these conditions. "This functionality already exists in product Y" becomes more or less irrelevant to the future success of a social media service, and more importantly, only narrowly relevant to its utility. [1] these may differ from subculture to subculture but exist at least locally