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Clubhouse Is a Cargo Cult

204 points by ivanagas 5y ago

iscrewyou 5y ago
It's an interesting take but the phenomenon is obvious in other alternatives to Clubhouse. Like the Spotify backed Greenroom. I signed up and waltzed in because Clubhouse hadn't sent an invite yet. Got an eerie feeling listening in some rooms. These apps can be a good supplement to likes of HAM radio for non-technical people but who knows what will become as things continue to ramp back up to being normal again for physical interactions.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  Normal seems surprisingly elusive.
hashkb 5y ago
Sounds like this could be easily generalized to basically everything in society. Edit: typo
codesnik 5y ago
thanks, I forgot the name of the app!
mikestew 5y ago
Having no interest in what Clubhouse is advertising to offer, I don't know that I've even seen a screenshot until reading TFA. And I'll admit that I probably don't run in the right circles anymore to judge the popularity of Clubhouse based on what my friends are doing. So I'll ask: was Clubhouse ever all that popular? One doesn't need to be very cynical to understand why it started as invite-only. Were they able to leverage that FOMO into anything resembling a user base? Or is this just 2021's more complicated cousin to the Yo app[0], in that there's a bunch of hype up front but no real substance? TFA makes it sound like it's the app for narcissists and their hangers-on. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_%28app%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_%28app%29
- inamiyar 5y ago
  I'm an Iranian-American and it's MASSIVE in Iran, only heard about it here and there in the US
  - Telemakhos 5y ago
    So, this is an unencrypted (not end-to-end at least), intercept-ready chat network that was popular among (a) people with social status in the US, who might be of intelligence interest (sc. Elon Musk), and (b) people in a nation state that is definitely of interest to US intelligence? Is that right?
  - ChrisArchitect 5y ago
    curious: what do you think that is? behind the trend thing? or a cultural thing? more popularity of talking on phones?
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > curious: what do you think that is? behind the trend thing? or a cultural thing? more popularity of talking on phones? Is it because the authorities are unaware of it and haven't blocked it, so there's a brief window where uncensored conversations can take place? Something like that happened with Clubhouse in China: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/world/asia/china-clubhouse-blocked.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/world/asia/china-clubhous...
    - inamiyar 5y ago
      I wish I could tell you, there is something to be said about 1) being live with no recording so records of dissent dont exist and 2) like the other commenter said slow government response I suspect it's a lot of small things and social network multiplicative effect
- void_mint 5y ago
  The hype was mostly from building manufactured exclusivity. Influencers got invited and then made a big thing about it, people that chase influencer content desperately wanted to be in the app. It's all just manufactured excitement. A new vehicle for influencers to pump content. If you're not an influencer, or not interested in listening to influencers, there's really nothing there for you.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Lol I didn't think it was that bad with a whole status hierarchy. I thought it was just a bunch of chat channels like discord. It confirms my feeling that this is totally not for me.
abvdasker 5y ago
I like this analysis because it avoids the trap of passing judgment on or revealing contempt for the high status people in question. Instead it focuses on the system that was Clubhouse and how it functioned to reinforce the hierarchy from which high status individuals benefit.
illumanaughty 5y ago
This is true for literally any social media, Clubhouse is just an easy target given the UI doesn't have to be used for the primary content. I mean Facebook is awful for many reasons and yet you can still get utility out of it. I'm sure Clubhouse is no different. Easy to sit on the sidelines and focus on one aspect of it, though.
- simonw 5y ago
  Facebook is much more about friends and family - there's status stuff on there too, but you can find Facebook useful without any interest in playing status games. I don't think there are many people on Clubhouse who are using it to talk to have group audio conversations with their friends and family - that's what WhatsApp and suchlike are for. Twitter is a bit more about status, but it also has a much stronger focus on niche interests. There are plenty of people I follow on Twitter who have low follower counts but consistently post interesting things about niche topics that I'm interested in.
  - briandear 5y ago
    > I don't think there are many people on Clubhouse who are using it to talk to have audio conversations with their friends and family - that's what WhatsApp and suchlike are for. Did I miss something? What happened to the telephone? Been using that for audio conversations for quite a while and don’t have to be a part of privacy-compromising social media companies.
    - simonw 5y ago
      Edited my comment to clarify I meant "group audio" conversations.
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      I remember reading an advice column where the author told a woman who was vexed that her children insisting on texting their friends instead of just calling them, "take solace in the fact that one day they'll likely be asking their own children, why don't you just text your friends?" I don't use apps like Whatsapp myself but it seems like they appeal to a lot of people for one reason or another.
layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
Club-what? I vaguely remember some app with an obnoxious icon… that’s all.
pfraze 5y ago
The status game is their answer to discovery, because ultimately Clubhouse's biggest problem is content quality. I ticked all the interests boxes, perused through the suggested rooms, and never ever waltzed into a room that I found interesting (after about 20 tries). The exception is a weekly room I was invited to by a friend. That room has been amazing. I've met people, had fun and interesting conversations, and gotten a lot of value out of the app. So Clubhouse is using one mechanism that's probably Almost Right, the "follows," to help discover rooms that are going to be worth your time. This then creates a status game, and it's very real; our weekly room had a million-follower person get on stage for about 15 seconds, and we suddenly had 1000+ people in the audience. It was a bit like a Twitch raid from a popular streamer. > Now that high status people can be seen in person again, they are spending less time on Clubhouse. Lower status people are left trying to be seen amongst themselves. Without high status people, Clubhouse is not serving its purpose of helping people be seen. It is a cargo cult: low status people recreating the actions of high status people, after they have left, thinking it will cause them to be high status. I have to agree. Clubhouse imploded around February and it's been a sad scene since then.
- rvz 5y ago
  Everyone, including some small startups have already added Clubhouse-like functionality into their own apps. Look at Discord, Facebook / Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, Spotify, Telegram, and even small startups like 'Public' have treated it like a feature, which is why Clubhouse is losing users. The only daily active users there are a16z and the same VCs of Clubhouse. I still don't know why it is worth $4B. And now Slack, with Slack Huddles [0] [0] https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/help/articles/4402059015315-Introducing-Slack-Huddles-a-new-way-to-have-live-audio-discussions https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/help/articles/4402059015315-Int...
  - addicted 5y ago
    It is a useful feature, but I doubt that’s why clubhouse is losing users. If clubhouse truly had interest conversations from interesting people all of whom derived benefit from these conversations it wouldn’t have lost to these other platforms because of network effects. Everyone was on clubhouse. I think the article does a good job backing up their theory about why clubhouse’s network effect has evaporated. People were there because it was a great way to show status during the pandemic. Now that other status displaying activities have opened up, they’ve left it en masse.
rvz 5y ago
I wonder if their logo will land them in a dispute with Houseparty for confusion. Maybe they should exit to Epic Games and rebrand to ClubHouseParty. EDIT: So these logos are not similar no? Clubhouse [0] vs Houseparty? [1] I guarantee (and I think Houseparty is watching them) that if Clubhouse decides to do video, Houseparty will file a lawsuit against them. [0] https://twitter.com/clubhouse https://twitter.com/clubhouse [1] https://twitter.com/houseparty https://twitter.com/houseparty
vhiremath4 5y ago
This piece resonates a _lot_ with me. There are a few rooms that are utilitarian in nature though (shoot your shot dating rooms for instance), and some where the people being seen are definite experts and it's interesting. Agreed that people with status have generally been leaving though.
samatman 5y ago
Clubhouse is a case where I expect the Twitter clone (Spaces) to eat their lunch. Twitter gives a social graph, and an asynchronous way to get to know people (accounts, really, one of the signatures of Twitter is how normal pseudonymity is). Spaces then gives the ability to throw together a little Clubhouse (synchronous voice chat) on top of that. My bet is that this works better as a feature, not a platform, and that the rise of Clubhouse was in fact an artifact of the pandemic. We'll see what happens.
- echelon 5y ago
  Same with Snapchat versus Instagram Stories. Except Snapchat was able to use their position and funding to invest in AR. Now they've got an incredibly compelling lead in that space. It'll be interesting to see what VR/AR/XR/metaverse products that Apple and Facebook have in the pipeline will do to that lead.
  - baby 5y ago
    What’s their lead in that space? I saw some quite impressive filters there, although it’s just filters, and there are the snapchat spectacles which are interesting and I’m happy they iterating on that. Am I missing something?
    - addicted 5y ago
      Aren’t the Instagram filters equally good anyways?
      - baby 5y ago
        I'm not a filter pro, but I feel like there's a real difference between the ones on snapchat and the ones on instagram. Actually, so much that people use the snapchat filters and post them on instagram and tiktok. I figured that out when I wanted to try these crazy disney princess filters after seeing them everywhere on these platforms. It looks like this if you want to see why I was impressed seeing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zts4s2IbANo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zts4s2IbANo
CydeWeys 5y ago
> The exclusivity from launching as invite and iPhone only is wearing off now that anyone can join including Android users. People still unironically believe shit like this, that your choice of phone OS says what kind of status you have??
- throwaway287391 5y ago
  From what I understand it absolutely does for US teenagers, if not anyone else. You don't want to be the "green bubble".
  - CydeWeys 5y ago
    Were teenagers the target audience for Clubhouse though? It doesn't seem like it?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jcpham2 5y ago
Once again, the only place I've ever even heard of this site Clubhouse is HN. As an early adopter of crypto the first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club. Many people didn't get the memo. Talk about something and evangelize it, you're participating in a pyramid scheme or maybe your persona makes you a natural salesperson and shill for whatever the cause. Crypto(currency), OTOH, is something that through network effect and social media echo chambers has come to fruition - for better or for worse. Let the market discover itself has been my mantra for 9 years, going back to G+ early days is when I promoted, shared, and prophesized about crypto. I came to the realization that any information shared runs against my personal goals to capitalize on markets. The first time I mined crypto in 2011 I documented all the steps on my blog for Ubuntu 8 with all the AMD and opencl goodies. Eventually I 410'd the whole blog and decided "don't talk about it" Another almost billionaire who doesn't tweet or join social audio apps. But I do read the commentary and according to sentiment, act accordingly.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
In march, I discussed with my wife why Clubhouse became so boring. We decided that it is because it is so February.
areoform 5y ago
> Rooms are smaller and driven by interests or topics, rather than the people involved And this is a good thing. I recently did a room with an optics engineer from NASA who made the optics for Cassini’s Composite IR Spectrometer. And now the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and the Vera Rubin Observatory. The conversation went into exacting depth, with all of us enjoying it a lot and learning along the way. It felt like a salon, not a club. Earlier I was doing a room with the discoverer of 2014 UN271, the largest comet discovered so far. The Chief Scientist of NASA joined in and we spent an hour discussing possible missions through this ancient comet’s plume. The discoverer of the object got to meet NASA’s Chief Scientist to talk about his baby, and NASA’s Chief Scientist got to nerd out with us on the largest comet ever found. We also talked about algorithms etc for better finds. These conversations exist. They often happen in private. Or in clubs like Small Steps & Giant Leaps. There weren’t more than 40 people in the “room” and if you’d had raised your hand, we’d have pulled you up to nerd out with us.
- FabHK 5y ago
  And how do you discover these good conversations? And how can you enjoy them async (I'm probably in a different timezone from your chat)?
  - areoform 5y ago
    I didn’t follow any of the people clubhouse told me to. On my first day on the app, I sought out and found scientists, astronauts, and engineers. I started joining these rooms, then talking in them, and now I host them.
    - r0rshrk 5y ago
      I'm interested in knowing what your Club's name is on Clubhouse. I also regularly host rooms with a focus on learning, bringing on an Indian space scientist this weekend.
      - areoform 5y ago
Animats 5y ago
"Cargo cult" is misused here. It's a status display area, which is quite different from a cargo cult.
- PostThisTooFast 5y ago
  The "misuse" is using it at all. It's meaningless shit, just like a lot of the douchey titles on here.
- Traster 5y ago
  I'm not sure you're right, what they're saying is the low status individuals are cargo culting high status individuals.
- bin_bash 5y ago
  I feel like you could draw a better metaphor to ponzi schemes
- cjdaly 5y ago
  I agree with you. Cargo cult is when physical goods are delivered by some high-tech society to a lower-tech one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult). Buying stuff from Amazon is more like cargo cult than Clubhouse is.
  - krinchan 5y ago
    It's evolved beyond that definition to encompass people imitating the actions of others with the belief that those actions will grant them something. In this case, it's low status people thinking that hosting rooms and talking inanely will increase their status when the reality is those activities are merely ways to show status, not gain it. Similarly, "cargo-culting" can be applied to a piece of code or script everyone copies and reuses without actually knowing how it works and then being confused when they've effectively built a wooden airplane and no goods have arrived. It's very common slang in tech circles.
Traster 5y ago
The only criticism I would have of this article is that it misses the underlying issue. There was never a reason for high status individuals to be on clubhouse, the reason they were there has nothing to do with the pandemic - it was because of the pump and dump style of Andreesen Horrowitz and the silicon valley obsession with being an early adopter. A16Z seemingly thought simply by telling everyone how excited they were about Clubhouse they could turn Clubhouse into being something to be excited about. The problem being that the reality undermined them though - just as they were telling people to be excited about the innovative conversations on Clubhouse, the number one story was some CEO getting arsey about a journalist reporting the news- a fundamentally petty and narcissistic look for an App that needed to be seen as cool and new. So Elon and co did their "Oh look at us we're early adopters dance" but never invested in the platform - because there was never a reason to, and that failure to give a value proposition to the people they wanted to harvest value from was their core issue.
- cobaltoxide 5y ago
  > There was never a reason for high status individuals to be on clubhouse Sounds like early-stage Quora.
  - chc 5y ago
    Quora doesn't really depend on status. If some random 17-year-old in Nicaragua who's really into the topic you asked about can provide the answer to your question, that's a good outcome. Clubhouse was not about knowledge transfer in that way. While Quora works like a "ask a librarian" hotline, Clubhouse was more like Comic-Con, where the identity of the speaker is the most important thing.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - arn 5y ago
      Early Quora was remarkable by how many high profile people were answering. That was a big part of its early appeal. An example I still remember. Someone asked How much it cost for AOL to distribute all those CDs in the 90s... and Steve Case answered! https://www.quora.com/How-much-did-it-cost-AOL-to-distribute-all-those-CDs-back-in-the-1990s-Whose-idea-was-it https://www.quora.com/How-much-did-it-cost-AOL-to-distribute...
andybak 5y ago
> Rooms are smaller and driven by interests or topics, rather than the people involved. The fact this statement was meant to be negative rather undermines everything else written here. That sounds fantastic to me. Bragging about being aware of status games is another status game.
- zem 5y ago
  it's doubtless negative from a vc perspective, because it generates value rather than profit.
dalbasal 5y ago
ehh.. so... I agree that this is a thing. I'm not sure its the thing. Clubhouse got a fast start with appearances but the likes of Musk, high interest content like the CEO of Robin Hood's appearing mid-gamestop craziness, etc. That, combined with the invite system meant that people were hearing about clubhouse and it gained reputation as the new exciting thing. Its now struggling to find a persistent place in the world. The former is remarkable, the latter is default. "Mountains of shite" has never been a real problem for social media. Twitter, blogs, youtube and others all had this claim leveled against them. 99.9% is crap and no one cares. All cats and sandwiches. The absence of 0.1%, bad discovery systems and such have been problems. That said, the "minimum viable" discovery method is twitter. Anyway... most successful social media thus far has either done it with home grown talent, like youtube, or being Twitter. Twitter requires very little commitment or effort, and is much better than facebook for famous people. Youtube eventually got youtubers... Twitch, Tiktok. IG is somewhere in between, with a lot of celebrity action but also IG-grown celebrities. CEOs and celebrities are ok as boosters, but they're not going to be there daily. The equivalent of a youtuber will have to emerge for clubhouse for it to stick. Cargo cult...eh. stretch. And yes. Ego, self promotion, a desire to be front and centre like Elon will play a big role. That goes without saying.
drops 5y ago
Just forget about it and let it die. That’s what everyone did everywhere except for America, it seems.
- rchaud 5y ago
  Well, an American VC has millions of dollars tied up in this, so they have to keep promoting it as the "future of conversation" or some other vomit-worthy overly grandiose descriptor
api 5y ago
I called Clubhouse "TED meets chat roulette."
- rchaud 5y ago
  These days, it's more like "TEDx meets Yo".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
vmception 5y ago
I joined my first Twitter Space yesterday, by direct link to the room! Same concept, some same and some different mistakes, wider audience.
asimjalis 5y ago
I never understood Clubhouse’s obsession with preventing recordings. This is the main reason I left. I had some great conversations with people on it. What I liked about Clubhouse was the serendipity of the conversations and the spontaneity. If Clubhouse made it easy to record it would create a permanent stream of podcasts and YouTube audio recordings that would virally bring more and more people to the platform. Instead of Clubhouse I use Zoom for my podcast interviews. Would have preferred Clubhouse. The Zoom setup is so straightforward. Meanwhile Clubhouse seems to be hostile to the idea.
- Clubber 5y ago
  I would guess because the famous people felt they could say something that could ruin their image / brand? I have no idea. Most people when they know they are or could be recorded act very reserved for obvious reasons.
- rchaud 5y ago
  If the recordings are distributed outside the app, there's no real reason to join Clubhouse, because all the 'good' content is no longer exclusive to Clubhouse. You wouldn't need to sign up with them if there's a good chance that the highlights of some important conversation will end up on Twitter in a day or two.
  - bastawhiz 5y ago
    They could also be distributed inside the app. Twitch (and FB/IG/Twitter) already do this with live content and it's been fairly successful.
PostThisTooFast 5y ago
Whatever THAT means...
gambiting 5y ago
I read this entire article and I still have absolutely no idea what it's talking about. What is clubhouse? I thought it was about the clubhouse music, but some of the comparisons were far too out there for music - so what is it then?
farmerstan 5y ago
Clubhouse is an talk radio station that can occasionally take listener calls. I never understood the fascination.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  Kind of a mix between Citizens Band, Ham and Talk Radio
unixhero 5y ago
When did the high status people leave and where did they go?
- rchaud 5y ago
  Wouldn't all the non-high status people like to know!
  - unixhero 5y ago
    Lol
guscost 5y ago
> Can Clubhouse ever recreate the magic of being a high status place to be seen? I sure hope not. That clout chasing crap leads to the worst and most boring conversations.

204 points by ivanagas 5y ago

It's an interesting take but the phenomenon is obvious in other alternatives to Clubhouse. Like the Spotify backed Greenroom. I signed up and waltzed in because Clubhouse hadn't sent an invite yet. Got an eerie feeling listening in some rooms. These apps can be a good supplement to likes of HAM radio for non-technical people but who knows what will become as things continue to ramp back up to being normal again for physical interactions.

emodendroket 5y ago
Normal seems surprisingly elusive.

hashkb 5y ago

Sounds like this could be easily generalized to basically everything in society. Edit: typo

codesnik 5y ago

thanks, I forgot the name of the app!

mikestew 5y ago

Having no interest in what Clubhouse is advertising to offer, I don't know that I've even seen a screenshot until reading TFA. And I'll admit that I probably don't run in the right circles anymore to judge the popularity of Clubhouse based on what my friends are doing. So I'll ask: was Clubhouse ever all that popular? One doesn't need to be very cynical to understand why it started as invite-only. Were they able to leverage that FOMO into anything resembling a user base? Or is this just 2021's more complicated cousin to the Yo app[0], in that there's a bunch of hype up front but no real substance? TFA makes it sound like it's the app for narcissists and their hangers-on. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_%28app%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_%28app%29

inamiyar 5y ago
I'm an Iranian-American and it's MASSIVE in Iran, only heard about it here and there in the US
- Telemakhos 5y ago
  So, this is an unencrypted (not end-to-end at least), intercept-ready chat network that was popular among (a) people with social status in the US, who might be of intelligence interest (sc. Elon Musk), and (b) people in a nation state that is definitely of interest to US intelligence? Is that right?
- ChrisArchitect 5y ago
  curious: what do you think that is? behind the trend thing? or a cultural thing? more popularity of talking on phones?
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > curious: what do you think that is? behind the trend thing? or a cultural thing? more popularity of talking on phones? Is it because the authorities are unaware of it and haven't blocked it, so there's a brief window where uncensored conversations can take place? Something like that happened with Clubhouse in China: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/world/asia/china-clubhouse-blocked.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/world/asia/china-clubhous...
  - inamiyar 5y ago
    I wish I could tell you, there is something to be said about 1) being live with no recording so records of dissent dont exist and 2) like the other commenter said slow government response I suspect it's a lot of small things and social network multiplicative effect
void_mint 5y ago
The hype was mostly from building manufactured exclusivity. Influencers got invited and then made a big thing about it, people that chase influencer content desperately wanted to be in the app. It's all just manufactured excitement. A new vehicle for influencers to pump content. If you're not an influencer, or not interested in listening to influencers, there's really nothing there for you.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Lol I didn't think it was that bad with a whole status hierarchy. I thought it was just a bunch of chat channels like discord. It confirms my feeling that this is totally not for me.

abvdasker 5y ago

I like this analysis because it avoids the trap of passing judgment on or revealing contempt for the high status people in question. Instead it focuses on the system that was Clubhouse and how it functioned to reinforce the hierarchy from which high status individuals benefit.

illumanaughty 5y ago

This is true for literally any social media, Clubhouse is just an easy target given the UI doesn't have to be used for the primary content. I mean Facebook is awful for many reasons and yet you can still get utility out of it. I'm sure Clubhouse is no different. Easy to sit on the sidelines and focus on one aspect of it, though.

simonw 5y ago
Facebook is much more about friends and family - there's status stuff on there too, but you can find Facebook useful without any interest in playing status games. I don't think there are many people on Clubhouse who are using it to talk to have group audio conversations with their friends and family - that's what WhatsApp and suchlike are for. Twitter is a bit more about status, but it also has a much stronger focus on niche interests. There are plenty of people I follow on Twitter who have low follower counts but consistently post interesting things about niche topics that I'm interested in.
- briandear 5y ago
  > I don't think there are many people on Clubhouse who are using it to talk to have audio conversations with their friends and family - that's what WhatsApp and suchlike are for. Did I miss something? What happened to the telephone? Been using that for audio conversations for quite a while and don’t have to be a part of privacy-compromising social media companies.
  - simonw 5y ago
    Edited my comment to clarify I meant "group audio" conversations.
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    I remember reading an advice column where the author told a woman who was vexed that her children insisting on texting their friends instead of just calling them, "take solace in the fact that one day they'll likely be asking their own children, why don't you just text your friends?" I don't use apps like Whatsapp myself but it seems like they appeal to a lot of people for one reason or another.

layoutIfNeeded 5y ago

Club-what? I vaguely remember some app with an obnoxious icon… that’s all.

pfraze 5y ago

The status game is their answer to discovery, because ultimately Clubhouse's biggest problem is content quality. I ticked all the interests boxes, perused through the suggested rooms, and never ever waltzed into a room that I found interesting (after about 20 tries). The exception is a weekly room I was invited to by a friend. That room has been amazing. I've met people, had fun and interesting conversations, and gotten a lot of value out of the app. So Clubhouse is using one mechanism that's probably Almost Right, the "follows," to help discover rooms that are going to be worth your time. This then creates a status game, and it's very real; our weekly room had a million-follower person get on stage for about 15 seconds, and we suddenly had 1000+ people in the audience. It was a bit like a Twitch raid from a popular streamer. > Now that high status people can be seen in person again, they are spending less time on Clubhouse. Lower status people are left trying to be seen amongst themselves. Without high status people, Clubhouse is not serving its purpose of helping people be seen. It is a cargo cult: low status people recreating the actions of high status people, after they have left, thinking it will cause them to be high status. I have to agree. Clubhouse imploded around February and it's been a sad scene since then.

rvz 5y ago
Everyone, including some small startups have already added Clubhouse-like functionality into their own apps. Look at Discord, Facebook / Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, Spotify, Telegram, and even small startups like 'Public' have treated it like a feature, which is why Clubhouse is losing users. The only daily active users there are a16z and the same VCs of Clubhouse. I still don't know why it is worth $4B. And now Slack, with Slack Huddles [0] [0] https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/help/articles/4402059015315-Introducing-Slack-Huddles-a-new-way-to-have-live-audio-discussions https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/help/articles/4402059015315-Int...
- addicted 5y ago
  It is a useful feature, but I doubt that’s why clubhouse is losing users. If clubhouse truly had interest conversations from interesting people all of whom derived benefit from these conversations it wouldn’t have lost to these other platforms because of network effects. Everyone was on clubhouse. I think the article does a good job backing up their theory about why clubhouse’s network effect has evaporated. People were there because it was a great way to show status during the pandemic. Now that other status displaying activities have opened up, they’ve left it en masse.

rvz 5y ago

I wonder if their logo will land them in a dispute with Houseparty for confusion. Maybe they should exit to Epic Games and rebrand to ClubHouseParty. EDIT: So these logos are not similar no? Clubhouse [0] vs Houseparty? [1] I guarantee (and I think Houseparty is watching them) that if Clubhouse decides to do video, Houseparty will file a lawsuit against them. [0] https://twitter.com/clubhouse https://twitter.com/clubhouse [1] https://twitter.com/houseparty https://twitter.com/houseparty

vhiremath4 5y ago

This piece resonates a _lot_ with me. There are a few rooms that are utilitarian in nature though (shoot your shot dating rooms for instance), and some where the people being seen are definite experts and it's interesting. Agreed that people with status have generally been leaving though.

samatman 5y ago

Clubhouse is a case where I expect the Twitter clone (Spaces) to eat their lunch. Twitter gives a social graph, and an asynchronous way to get to know people (accounts, really, one of the signatures of Twitter is how normal pseudonymity is). Spaces then gives the ability to throw together a little Clubhouse (synchronous voice chat) on top of that. My bet is that this works better as a feature, not a platform, and that the rise of Clubhouse was in fact an artifact of the pandemic. We'll see what happens.

echelon 5y ago
Same with Snapchat versus Instagram Stories. Except Snapchat was able to use their position and funding to invest in AR. Now they've got an incredibly compelling lead in that space. It'll be interesting to see what VR/AR/XR/metaverse products that Apple and Facebook have in the pipeline will do to that lead.
- baby 5y ago
  What’s their lead in that space? I saw some quite impressive filters there, although it’s just filters, and there are the snapchat spectacles which are interesting and I’m happy they iterating on that. Am I missing something?
  - addicted 5y ago
    Aren’t the Instagram filters equally good anyways?
    - baby 5y ago
      I'm not a filter pro, but I feel like there's a real difference between the ones on snapchat and the ones on instagram. Actually, so much that people use the snapchat filters and post them on instagram and tiktok. I figured that out when I wanted to try these crazy disney princess filters after seeing them everywhere on these platforms. It looks like this if you want to see why I was impressed seeing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zts4s2IbANo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zts4s2IbANo

CydeWeys 5y ago

> The exclusivity from launching as invite and iPhone only is wearing off now that anyone can join including Android users. People still unironically believe shit like this, that your choice of phone OS says what kind of status you have??

throwaway287391 5y ago
From what I understand it absolutely does for US teenagers, if not anyone else. You don't want to be the "green bubble".
- CydeWeys 5y ago
  Were teenagers the target audience for Clubhouse though? It doesn't seem like it?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jcpham2 5y ago

Once again, the only place I've ever even heard of this site Clubhouse is HN. As an early adopter of crypto the first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club. Many people didn't get the memo. Talk about something and evangelize it, you're participating in a pyramid scheme or maybe your persona makes you a natural salesperson and shill for whatever the cause. Crypto(currency), OTOH, is something that through network effect and social media echo chambers has come to fruition - for better or for worse. Let the market discover itself has been my mantra for 9 years, going back to G+ early days is when I promoted, shared, and prophesized about crypto. I came to the realization that any information shared runs against my personal goals to capitalize on markets. The first time I mined crypto in 2011 I documented all the steps on my blog for Ubuntu 8 with all the AMD and opencl goodies. Eventually I 410'd the whole blog and decided "don't talk about it" Another almost billionaire who doesn't tweet or join social audio apps. But I do read the commentary and according to sentiment, act accordingly.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

In march, I discussed with my wife why Clubhouse became so boring. We decided that it is because it is so February.

areoform 5y ago

> Rooms are smaller and driven by interests or topics, rather than the people involved And this is a good thing. I recently did a room with an optics engineer from NASA who made the optics for Cassini’s Composite IR Spectrometer. And now the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and the Vera Rubin Observatory. The conversation went into exacting depth, with all of us enjoying it a lot and learning along the way. It felt like a salon, not a club. Earlier I was doing a room with the discoverer of 2014 UN271, the largest comet discovered so far. The Chief Scientist of NASA joined in and we spent an hour discussing possible missions through this ancient comet’s plume. The discoverer of the object got to meet NASA’s Chief Scientist to talk about his baby, and NASA’s Chief Scientist got to nerd out with us on the largest comet ever found. We also talked about algorithms etc for better finds. These conversations exist. They often happen in private. Or in clubs like Small Steps & Giant Leaps. There weren’t more than 40 people in the “room” and if you’d had raised your hand, we’d have pulled you up to nerd out with us.

FabHK 5y ago
And how do you discover these good conversations? And how can you enjoy them async (I'm probably in a different timezone from your chat)?
- areoform 5y ago
  I didn’t follow any of the people clubhouse told me to. On my first day on the app, I sought out and found scientists, astronauts, and engineers. I started joining these rooms, then talking in them, and now I host them.
  - r0rshrk 5y ago
    I'm interested in knowing what your Club's name is on Clubhouse. I also regularly host rooms with a focus on learning, bringing on an Indian space scientist this weekend.
    - areoform 5y ago

Animats 5y ago

"Cargo cult" is misused here. It's a status display area, which is quite different from a cargo cult.

PostThisTooFast 5y ago
The "misuse" is using it at all. It's meaningless shit, just like a lot of the douchey titles on here.
Traster 5y ago
I'm not sure you're right, what they're saying is the low status individuals are cargo culting high status individuals.
bin_bash 5y ago
I feel like you could draw a better metaphor to ponzi schemes
cjdaly 5y ago
I agree with you. Cargo cult is when physical goods are delivered by some high-tech society to a lower-tech one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult). Buying stuff from Amazon is more like cargo cult than Clubhouse is.
- krinchan 5y ago
  It's evolved beyond that definition to encompass people imitating the actions of others with the belief that those actions will grant them something. In this case, it's low status people thinking that hosting rooms and talking inanely will increase their status when the reality is those activities are merely ways to show status, not gain it. Similarly, "cargo-culting" can be applied to a piece of code or script everyone copies and reuses without actually knowing how it works and then being confused when they've effectively built a wooden airplane and no goods have arrived. It's very common slang in tech circles.

Traster 5y ago

The only criticism I would have of this article is that it misses the underlying issue. There was never a reason for high status individuals to be on clubhouse, the reason they were there has nothing to do with the pandemic - it was because of the pump and dump style of Andreesen Horrowitz and the silicon valley obsession with being an early adopter. A16Z seemingly thought simply by telling everyone how excited they were about Clubhouse they could turn Clubhouse into being something to be excited about. The problem being that the reality undermined them though - just as they were telling people to be excited about the innovative conversations on Clubhouse, the number one story was some CEO getting arsey about a journalist reporting the news- a fundamentally petty and narcissistic look for an App that needed to be seen as cool and new. So Elon and co did their "Oh look at us we're early adopters dance" but never invested in the platform - because there was never a reason to, and that failure to give a value proposition to the people they wanted to harvest value from was their core issue.

cobaltoxide 5y ago
> There was never a reason for high status individuals to be on clubhouse Sounds like early-stage Quora.
- chc 5y ago
  Quora doesn't really depend on status. If some random 17-year-old in Nicaragua who's really into the topic you asked about can provide the answer to your question, that's a good outcome. Clubhouse was not about knowledge transfer in that way. While Quora works like a "ask a librarian" hotline, Clubhouse was more like Comic-Con, where the identity of the speaker is the most important thing.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - arn 5y ago
    Early Quora was remarkable by how many high profile people were answering. That was a big part of its early appeal. An example I still remember. Someone asked How much it cost for AOL to distribute all those CDs in the 90s... and Steve Case answered! https://www.quora.com/How-much-did-it-cost-AOL-to-distribute-all-those-CDs-back-in-the-1990s-Whose-idea-was-it https://www.quora.com/How-much-did-it-cost-AOL-to-distribute...

andybak 5y ago

> Rooms are smaller and driven by interests or topics, rather than the people involved. The fact this statement was meant to be negative rather undermines everything else written here. That sounds fantastic to me. Bragging about being aware of status games is another status game.

zem 5y ago
it's doubtless negative from a vc perspective, because it generates value rather than profit.

dalbasal 5y ago

ehh.. so... I agree that this is a thing. I'm not sure its the thing. Clubhouse got a fast start with appearances but the likes of Musk, high interest content like the CEO of Robin Hood's appearing mid-gamestop craziness, etc. That, combined with the invite system meant that people were hearing about clubhouse and it gained reputation as the new exciting thing. Its now struggling to find a persistent place in the world. The former is remarkable, the latter is default. "Mountains of shite" has never been a real problem for social media. Twitter, blogs, youtube and others all had this claim leveled against them. 99.9% is crap and no one cares. All cats and sandwiches. The absence of 0.1%, bad discovery systems and such have been problems. That said, the "minimum viable" discovery method is twitter. Anyway... most successful social media thus far has either done it with home grown talent, like youtube, or being Twitter. Twitter requires very little commitment or effort, and is much better than facebook for famous people. Youtube eventually got youtubers... Twitch, Tiktok. IG is somewhere in between, with a lot of celebrity action but also IG-grown celebrities. CEOs and celebrities are ok as boosters, but they're not going to be there daily. The equivalent of a youtuber will have to emerge for clubhouse for it to stick. Cargo cult...eh. stretch. And yes. Ego, self promotion, a desire to be front and centre like Elon will play a big role. That goes without saying.

drops 5y ago

Just forget about it and let it die. That’s what everyone did everywhere except for America, it seems.

rchaud 5y ago
Well, an American VC has millions of dollars tied up in this, so they have to keep promoting it as the "future of conversation" or some other vomit-worthy overly grandiose descriptor

api 5y ago

I called Clubhouse "TED meets chat roulette."

rchaud 5y ago
These days, it's more like "TEDx meets Yo".

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

vmception 5y ago

I joined my first Twitter Space yesterday, by direct link to the room! Same concept, some same and some different mistakes, wider audience.

asimjalis 5y ago

I never understood Clubhouse’s obsession with preventing recordings. This is the main reason I left. I had some great conversations with people on it. What I liked about Clubhouse was the serendipity of the conversations and the spontaneity. If Clubhouse made it easy to record it would create a permanent stream of podcasts and YouTube audio recordings that would virally bring more and more people to the platform. Instead of Clubhouse I use Zoom for my podcast interviews. Would have preferred Clubhouse. The Zoom setup is so straightforward. Meanwhile Clubhouse seems to be hostile to the idea.

Clubber 5y ago
I would guess because the famous people felt they could say something that could ruin their image / brand? I have no idea. Most people when they know they are or could be recorded act very reserved for obvious reasons.
rchaud 5y ago
If the recordings are distributed outside the app, there's no real reason to join Clubhouse, because all the 'good' content is no longer exclusive to Clubhouse. You wouldn't need to sign up with them if there's a good chance that the highlights of some important conversation will end up on Twitter in a day or two.
- bastawhiz 5y ago
  They could also be distributed inside the app. Twitch (and FB/IG/Twitter) already do this with live content and it's been fairly successful.

PostThisTooFast 5y ago

Whatever THAT means...

gambiting 5y ago

I read this entire article and I still have absolutely no idea what it's talking about. What is clubhouse? I thought it was about the clubhouse music, but some of the comparisons were far too out there for music - so what is it then?

farmerstan 5y ago

Clubhouse is an talk radio station that can occasionally take listener calls. I never understood the fascination.

elzbardico 5y ago
Kind of a mix between Citizens Band, Ham and Talk Radio

unixhero 5y ago

When did the high status people leave and where did they go?

rchaud 5y ago
Wouldn't all the non-high status people like to know!
- unixhero 5y ago
  Lol

guscost 5y ago

> Can Clubhouse ever recreate the magic of being a high status place to be seen? I sure hope not. That clout chasing crap leads to the worst and most boring conversations.