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> I heard him make the claim that Clubhouse has bigger potential than text-based social platforms, because talking has less friction than writing Finding peopl

> I heard him make the claim that Clubhouse has bigger potential than text-based social platforms, because talking has less friction than writing Finding people that talk about stuff is one thing, finding people who like to listen to other people talking is the other. Unfortunately, listening has much higher friction than reading.

dylan604 5y ago
You'd think, but look at the plethora of sports programming of people sitting in a studio talking about sports. Just talking. Very little clips of sports. Just talking. Then, they have the same kind of shows on fantasy sports. Some of these shows are double duty of a radio program, so it's people talking into a microphone so even less need for actual sports footage.
sunstone 5y ago
On the other hand both YouTube channels and podcasts have found a spoken audience. And YouTube is often just someone(s) talking (eg PBS Space Time) that could easily be a podcast.
- kikokikokiko 5y ago
  SpaceTime has AMAZING graphics though, I don't think it's the best example of a channel that would not lose quality on an audio only format.
jasode 5y ago
>Unfortunately, listening has much higher friction than reading. Sure, for a minority of consumers like yourself. However, for most people that make up the mass audience... they do not like to read long-form text whether it is articles in Vanity Fair, The Atlantic or books. Yes, people would rather read the text of a temperature and weather forecast on their smartphone -- instead of listen to a long-winded presentation by a tv news meteorologist. But when we compare apples-to-apples of long-form high word count type of content, an audio medium for listening is preferred by mass consumers. Most would prefer hearing Joe Rogan and his guest speak rather than reading 50000+ word transcripts of a 3 hour conversation. Likewise, talk radio is very popular and has higher audience counts than the circulation numbers of long-form magazines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-listened-to_radio_programs#Popular_radio_shows_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-listened-to_radio... Also, reading has its own "frictions" because text is missing tonal inflection, length of pauses, deadpan vs incredulous delivery, etc.
- dcow 5y ago
  So how does clubhouse change the game? We already have youtube and podcasts. You can listen to Joe Rogan over bluetooth in your car. You can even ask Siri to play it. What is clubhouse doing that makes it easier to access or produce high word count content in audio form? How is clubhouse helping creators monetize their content? Why would I go to clubhouse instead of patreon for the type of content you describe? Not a clubhouse user, genuinely curious.
  - nift 5y ago
    Not a clubhouse expert but it seems clubhouse is better for “spontaneous” conversations/talks, as in I don’t have to upload it as a podcast perhaps do post-processing etc to get my content out. It also allows you to promote your audience to speakers so it’s more of an interactive podcasts, so you can actually ask questions to a panel or the speaker. Again, haven’t used it much but this is what I understand Clubhouse brings to the table.
    - dcow 5y ago
      Sure but the argument in the comment I was responding to was “look at all this long-form produced spoken content, clubhouse can tap that”. I don't experience much (any) spontaneous short form spoken content on the internet. The interactive element is interesting if that can somehow become relevant.
    - derefr 5y ago
      > as in I don’t have to upload it as a podcast perhaps do post-processing etc to get my content out That sounds like shirking the responsibility of not wasting the listener's time, i.e. lowering the barrier to production at the cost of raising the friction of consumption. For the app to be popular to use — rather than just popular to publish on — wouldn't you want the opposite? Or, to put that another way: wouldn't "an edited recording of a talk recorded on Clubhouse, posted to YouTube" become a more popular way to consume Clubhouse content, than actually going on Clubhouse? And would this not kill any hope Clubhouse would have of ever monetizing, since there would be no users on the app itself to ever show ads to? (I think this is truly the thing that really did "kill" Vine, in the end: there was no reason for most people — who are not, themselves, performers — to engage with Vines on Vine, when they could just engage with Vine compilations on YouTube. The creators saw the writing on the wall and sold it. TikTok came up with a better model, "democratizing" Vine's professionally-produced-funny-6-second-clip model into the much more widely-engaged-with "clip of a pretty person being silly with platform-licensed music in the background" model.)
seanp2k2 5y ago
I did not have a need for content to fill the gaps between a YouTube video, a podcast, and a phone call or group video chat. The exclusivity and talk of rampant racists [0] on the platform killed any interest I had in checking it out. I really don’t get what problem they think this solves for users. 0. https://www.thelily.com/women-in-tech-are-networking-through-clubhouse-an-invite-only-app-but-these-black-women-say-its-not-a-place-for-us/ https://www.thelily.com/women-in-tech-are-networking-through... - there are more if you Google around but this was the first thing that came up and I recall reading something similar.

dylan604 5y ago

You'd think, but look at the plethora of sports programming of people sitting in a studio talking about sports. Just talking. Very little clips of sports. Just talking. Then, they have the same kind of shows on fantasy sports. Some of these shows are double duty of a radio program, so it's people talking into a microphone so even less need for actual sports footage.

sunstone 5y ago

On the other hand both YouTube channels and podcasts have found a spoken audience. And YouTube is often just someone(s) talking (eg PBS Space Time) that could easily be a podcast.

kikokikokiko 5y ago
SpaceTime has AMAZING graphics though, I don't think it's the best example of a channel that would not lose quality on an audio only format.

jasode 5y ago

>Unfortunately, listening has much higher friction than reading. Sure, for a minority of consumers like yourself. However, for most people that make up the mass audience... they do not like to read long-form text whether it is articles in Vanity Fair, The Atlantic or books. Yes, people would rather read the text of a temperature and weather forecast on their smartphone -- instead of listen to a long-winded presentation by a tv news meteorologist. But when we compare apples-to-apples of long-form high word count type of content, an audio medium for listening is preferred by mass consumers. Most would prefer hearing Joe Rogan and his guest speak rather than reading 50000+ word transcripts of a 3 hour conversation. Likewise, talk radio is very popular and has higher audience counts than the circulation numbers of long-form magazines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-listened-to_radio_programs#Popular_radio_shows_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-listened-to_radio... Also, reading has its own "frictions" because text is missing tonal inflection, length of pauses, deadpan vs incredulous delivery, etc.

dcow 5y ago
So how does clubhouse change the game? We already have youtube and podcasts. You can listen to Joe Rogan over bluetooth in your car. You can even ask Siri to play it. What is clubhouse doing that makes it easier to access or produce high word count content in audio form? How is clubhouse helping creators monetize their content? Why would I go to clubhouse instead of patreon for the type of content you describe? Not a clubhouse user, genuinely curious.
- nift 5y ago
  Not a clubhouse expert but it seems clubhouse is better for “spontaneous” conversations/talks, as in I don’t have to upload it as a podcast perhaps do post-processing etc to get my content out. It also allows you to promote your audience to speakers so it’s more of an interactive podcasts, so you can actually ask questions to a panel or the speaker. Again, haven’t used it much but this is what I understand Clubhouse brings to the table.
  - dcow 5y ago
    Sure but the argument in the comment I was responding to was “look at all this long-form produced spoken content, clubhouse can tap that”. I don't experience much (any) spontaneous short form spoken content on the internet. The interactive element is interesting if that can somehow become relevant.
  - derefr 5y ago
    > as in I don’t have to upload it as a podcast perhaps do post-processing etc to get my content out That sounds like shirking the responsibility of not wasting the listener's time, i.e. lowering the barrier to production at the cost of raising the friction of consumption. For the app to be popular to use — rather than just popular to publish on — wouldn't you want the opposite? Or, to put that another way: wouldn't "an edited recording of a talk recorded on Clubhouse, posted to YouTube" become a more popular way to consume Clubhouse content, than actually going on Clubhouse? And would this not kill any hope Clubhouse would have of ever monetizing, since there would be no users on the app itself to ever show ads to? (I think this is truly the thing that really did "kill" Vine, in the end: there was no reason for most people — who are not, themselves, performers — to engage with Vines on Vine, when they could just engage with Vine compilations on YouTube. The creators saw the writing on the wall and sold it. TikTok came up with a better model, "democratizing" Vine's professionally-produced-funny-6-second-clip model into the much more widely-engaged-with "clip of a pretty person being silly with platform-licensed music in the background" model.)

seanp2k2 5y ago

I did not have a need for content to fill the gaps between a YouTube video, a podcast, and a phone call or group video chat. The exclusivity and talk of rampant racists [0] on the platform killed any interest I had in checking it out. I really don’t get what problem they think this solves for users. 0. https://www.thelily.com/women-in-tech-are-networking-through-clubhouse-an-invite-only-app-but-these-black-women-say-its-not-a-place-for-us/ https://www.thelily.com/women-in-tech-are-networking-through... - there are more if you Google around but this was the first thing that came up and I recall reading something similar.