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> Yet, with no Android app and an increasing amount of competitors copying the hell out of Clubhouse, I can only see this going in the way of Meerkat, Yik Yak a

> Yet, with no Android app and an increasing amount of competitors copying the hell out of Clubhouse, I can only see this going in the way of Meerkat, Yik Yak and Periscope. (By being shut down) We'll of course have to wait and see, but I don't imagine that Clubhouse will be entirely displaced. What's unique about Clubhouse is not the concept of a Clubhouse room itself, which is essentially a Discord channel with basic moderation capabilities, but the community it has created. For the moment at least, Clubhouse is chock full of cool and influential people. Clubhouse rooms range from typical seminars, to loosely moderated discussions, to essentially chat rooms. The cool thing is you run into people who have interesting stories and lives. For instance, attending a seminar on nuclear disarmament with New York Times reporters, public policymakers, and whatever random influential people show up to pop up on stage. Or attending a discussion on Tibet where Ai Wei Wei, Tibetan monks, and other dissidents pop in. Another interesting product of Clubhouse is that it's opened a large forum for Chinese-language public discussion. Clubhouse is one of the very few online places I've seen people willing to speak frankly on sensitive political issues in Chinese, perhaps because Clubhouse rooms are (at least nominally) ephemeral, leaving no record. Even though Clubhouse is now blocked in China, a lot of this discussion is continuing, with voices on all sides of the political spectrum.

secondcoming 6y ago
But isn't it invite only?
- xiii1408 6y ago
  You can create an account even without an invite. If you give it access to your contacts, your friends will get a notification to invite you, if they have an invite to give. Once you get an invite, your account will be activated, and you can use Clubhouse. This is how I got in, through a friend I hadn't talked to in a while.
  - dd36 6y ago
    That’s an interesting way to scrape people’s connections and phone numbers.
    - uncoder0 6y ago
      It's been done before. I consider it a passive dark pattern.
not_exactly__ 6y ago
The (possible) irony is that ClubHouse uses Agora behind the scenes to power its real-time audio. that’s a Chinese company based in Mainland China. I’d be careful if I was them. The double irony is that I believe Agora is blocked behind TGF.
- xiii1408 6y ago
  Excellent point. There are apparently already Clubhouse bots as well, and it would be trivial to record audio using one (although you'd need a bot per room you want to record). It's probably very difficult to recognize Clubhouse bots as well, since you probably don't need that many of them, at least with Clubhouse's current scale, to record all the interesting big political discussions.
- khc 6y ago
  I think the usual abbreviation is GFW not TGF
  - pc86 6y ago
    And yet you still knew what they were referring to :)
- azinman2 6y ago
  This is something that is swappable if they're concerned about it. The brand, however, is not.
  - ashkankiani 6y ago
    Will they be responsible enough to care about it before it becomes a problem? Proactive infrastructure upgrades are not a strong suit of most "hip" startups.
BelenusMordred 6y ago
> Clubhouse is one of the very few online places I've seen people willing to speak frankly on sensitive political issues in Chinese This is more an effect of you being exposed to Chinese people rather than some new phenomenon. Mainland politics is everywhere online, it's in the digital spaces that Westerners rarely visit though.
- xiii1408 6y ago
  Would love to hear examples of other platforms.
- sss111 6y ago
  What are some of these platforms? Would love to know
  - BelenusMordred 6y ago
    I get the feeling whatever I provide is going to be criticised, regardless, here goes: 百度贴吧 - https://tieba.baidu.com/ https://tieba.baidu.com/ Probably the biggest platform out there. You can argue it's censored but then again the same arguments could be made about plenty of Western platforms who follow the moral mores of 2021. There's a lot of leetspeak to get around filters when talking about sensitive topics, translations aren't always great but if you find something particularly out of place maybe try checking for alt meanings. There's >300 million active monthly users. Plenty of things you won't like in there. 人人 - https://www.renren.com/ https://www.renren.com/ Facebook style, mostly younger people. 天涯 - http://www.tianya.cn/ http://www.tianya.cn/ Traditional type forum, mainly older people, certainly more patriotic. If you want to only read opinions you are more amenable to and won't accuse of being bots/cybertroopers I'd suggest the forums that foreign mainlanders often use. Around East Asia and the bamboo network there's few popular places: 吹水台 - https://lihkg.com/ https://lihkg.com/ Cari, an example thread - https://cn.cari.com.my/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=4263651&extra=page%3D1%26filter%3Dtypeid%26typeid%3D4726 https://cn.cari.com.my/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=4263651&... Plenty I've missed surely.
    - blueblisters 6y ago
geerlingguy 6y ago
My prediction (based on little evidence, just gut feeling) is Clubhouse will go the way of Quora. It started out with a bang (fanfare and huge celebrity usage), ended (well I guess Quora still exists...) with a whimper.
- wpietri 6y ago
  As a former Quora Top Writer (2013 and 2014), that makes a lot of sense to me. And faster, I'd bet. What made Quora special in the early days was the high-quality community. Smart questions, smart writers answering them, even a reasonable proportion of smart comments. That seems to be the same sort of magic that Clubhouse has managed. It's not the technology, it's the community. But as Quora tried to scale, that got worse and worse. It wasn't a small set of staff doing moderation, but a wider group of volunteers. The average quality of the questions declined. Comments became more tiresome. A lot of people started writing answers not for the joy of it, but because Quora's larger platform provided them with a means to some personal end. Comments became more tiresome. Indeed, now one of the first search results I get for "Quora" now is an article titled "How to use Quora to power up your lead generation." Ugh. I'll be really surprised if Clubhouse manages to avoid a similar fate. There's a very low barrier to entry.
  - joshspankit 6y ago
    My instinct says you’re exactly on track. Unfortunately. Clubhouse is great right now and it seems to take far too long between “lightning strikes” of awesome communities.
  - coliveira 6y ago
    But "lead generation" is the fate of all social networks. It may be cool at the beginning, but very soon marketers will figure out how to use it for commercial purposes, and this will become 90% of the use. It is the same story on Facebook, Pinterest, and so many others.
    - rchaud 6y ago
      Yup. User-generated content is prized by social networks because it's free to acquire. But over time, you get what you pay for.
mynegation 6y ago
There are cool and influential people on Clubhouse, for sure. I listened to and participated in very interesting conversations. The vast majority of Clubhouse though is shady NFT talks, literally blind dating, and shameless self promotion by countless “coaches”, “facilitators”, and “DJs”. I do not have a good feeling about it.
- joshspankit 6y ago
  “Majority” is a tricky term here since the hallways are so subjective and the recommendation engines are in flux. I personally see maybe 1 blind dating room a week and only a couple NFT rooms in a 24 hour span.
sangnoir 6y ago
> Clubhouse is one of the very few online places I've seen people willing to speak frankly on sensitive political issues in Chinese, perhaps because Clubhouse rooms are (at least nominally) ephemeral, leaving no record. I don't think that's a reasonable assumption since the invention of screen recorders, especially combined with Clubhouse's "real name" and a "real face" policy (I'm not sure if the latter is official policy or just a community convention, I'd be more worried about the former)
alfiedotwtf 6y ago
I’ve found the total opposite. Most things I’ve listened to have eventually turned into a sales pitch. It’s almost like clubhouse is infomercials with listeners calling in. And then there’s the avalanche of notification spam..,
ohashi 6y ago
Speaking of community and having 'influencers' on it, I would bet it takes more the route of Quora which once upon a time you could say similar things. But it's a complete shit hole now.
- fnord123 6y ago
  I don't even recall a time when Quora wasn't basically Yahoo Answers.
exactlysolved 6y ago
> For the moment at least, Clubhouse is chock full of cool and influential people. There's a fundamental tension here. Cool and influential people want to hang out with other cool and influential people. Non-cool and non-influential people also want to hang out with cool and influential people. When you use your exclusivity to build popularity there's only one way it can play out. You can do it as slowly as possible or all in one big bang but it will happen.

secondcoming 6y ago

But isn't it invite only?

xiii1408 6y ago
You can create an account even without an invite. If you give it access to your contacts, your friends will get a notification to invite you, if they have an invite to give. Once you get an invite, your account will be activated, and you can use Clubhouse. This is how I got in, through a friend I hadn't talked to in a while.
- dd36 6y ago
  That’s an interesting way to scrape people’s connections and phone numbers.
  - uncoder0 6y ago
    It's been done before. I consider it a passive dark pattern.

not_exactly__ 6y ago

The (possible) irony is that ClubHouse uses Agora behind the scenes to power its real-time audio. that’s a Chinese company based in Mainland China. I’d be careful if I was them. The double irony is that I believe Agora is blocked behind TGF.

xiii1408 6y ago
Excellent point. There are apparently already Clubhouse bots as well, and it would be trivial to record audio using one (although you'd need a bot per room you want to record). It's probably very difficult to recognize Clubhouse bots as well, since you probably don't need that many of them, at least with Clubhouse's current scale, to record all the interesting big political discussions.
khc 6y ago
I think the usual abbreviation is GFW not TGF
- pc86 6y ago
  And yet you still knew what they were referring to :)
azinman2 6y ago
This is something that is swappable if they're concerned about it. The brand, however, is not.
- ashkankiani 6y ago
  Will they be responsible enough to care about it before it becomes a problem? Proactive infrastructure upgrades are not a strong suit of most "hip" startups.

BelenusMordred 6y ago

> Clubhouse is one of the very few online places I've seen people willing to speak frankly on sensitive political issues in Chinese This is more an effect of you being exposed to Chinese people rather than some new phenomenon. Mainland politics is everywhere online, it's in the digital spaces that Westerners rarely visit though.

xiii1408 6y ago
Would love to hear examples of other platforms.
sss111 6y ago
What are some of these platforms? Would love to know
- BelenusMordred 6y ago
  I get the feeling whatever I provide is going to be criticised, regardless, here goes: 百度贴吧 - https://tieba.baidu.com/ https://tieba.baidu.com/ Probably the biggest platform out there. You can argue it's censored but then again the same arguments could be made about plenty of Western platforms who follow the moral mores of 2021. There's a lot of leetspeak to get around filters when talking about sensitive topics, translations aren't always great but if you find something particularly out of place maybe try checking for alt meanings. There's >300 million active monthly users. Plenty of things you won't like in there. 人人 - https://www.renren.com/ https://www.renren.com/ Facebook style, mostly younger people. 天涯 - http://www.tianya.cn/ http://www.tianya.cn/ Traditional type forum, mainly older people, certainly more patriotic. If you want to only read opinions you are more amenable to and won't accuse of being bots/cybertroopers I'd suggest the forums that foreign mainlanders often use. Around East Asia and the bamboo network there's few popular places: 吹水台 - https://lihkg.com/ https://lihkg.com/ Cari, an example thread - https://cn.cari.com.my/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=4263651&extra=page%3D1%26filter%3Dtypeid%26typeid%3D4726 https://cn.cari.com.my/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=4263651&... Plenty I've missed surely.
  - blueblisters 6y ago

geerlingguy 6y ago

My prediction (based on little evidence, just gut feeling) is Clubhouse will go the way of Quora. It started out with a bang (fanfare and huge celebrity usage), ended (well I guess Quora still exists...) with a whimper.

wpietri 6y ago
As a former Quora Top Writer (2013 and 2014), that makes a lot of sense to me. And faster, I'd bet. What made Quora special in the early days was the high-quality community. Smart questions, smart writers answering them, even a reasonable proportion of smart comments. That seems to be the same sort of magic that Clubhouse has managed. It's not the technology, it's the community. But as Quora tried to scale, that got worse and worse. It wasn't a small set of staff doing moderation, but a wider group of volunteers. The average quality of the questions declined. Comments became more tiresome. A lot of people started writing answers not for the joy of it, but because Quora's larger platform provided them with a means to some personal end. Comments became more tiresome. Indeed, now one of the first search results I get for "Quora" now is an article titled "How to use Quora to power up your lead generation." Ugh. I'll be really surprised if Clubhouse manages to avoid a similar fate. There's a very low barrier to entry.
- joshspankit 6y ago
  My instinct says you’re exactly on track. Unfortunately. Clubhouse is great right now and it seems to take far too long between “lightning strikes” of awesome communities.
- coliveira 6y ago
  But "lead generation" is the fate of all social networks. It may be cool at the beginning, but very soon marketers will figure out how to use it for commercial purposes, and this will become 90% of the use. It is the same story on Facebook, Pinterest, and so many others.
  - rchaud 6y ago
    Yup. User-generated content is prized by social networks because it's free to acquire. But over time, you get what you pay for.

mynegation 6y ago

There are cool and influential people on Clubhouse, for sure. I listened to and participated in very interesting conversations. The vast majority of Clubhouse though is shady NFT talks, literally blind dating, and shameless self promotion by countless “coaches”, “facilitators”, and “DJs”. I do not have a good feeling about it.

joshspankit 6y ago
“Majority” is a tricky term here since the hallways are so subjective and the recommendation engines are in flux. I personally see maybe 1 blind dating room a week and only a couple NFT rooms in a 24 hour span.

sangnoir 6y ago

> Clubhouse is one of the very few online places I've seen people willing to speak frankly on sensitive political issues in Chinese, perhaps because Clubhouse rooms are (at least nominally) ephemeral, leaving no record. I don't think that's a reasonable assumption since the invention of screen recorders, especially combined with Clubhouse's "real name" and a "real face" policy (I'm not sure if the latter is official policy or just a community convention, I'd be more worried about the former)

alfiedotwtf 6y ago

I’ve found the total opposite. Most things I’ve listened to have eventually turned into a sales pitch. It’s almost like clubhouse is infomercials with listeners calling in. And then there’s the avalanche of notification spam..,

ohashi 6y ago

Speaking of community and having 'influencers' on it, I would bet it takes more the route of Quora which once upon a time you could say similar things. But it's a complete shit hole now.

fnord123 6y ago
I don't even recall a time when Quora wasn't basically Yahoo Answers.

exactlysolved 6y ago

> For the moment at least, Clubhouse is chock full of cool and influential people. There's a fundamental tension here. Cool and influential people want to hang out with other cool and influential people. Non-cool and non-influential people also want to hang out with cool and influential people. When you use your exclusivity to build popularity there's only one way it can play out. You can do it as slowly as possible or all in one big bang but it will happen.