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Maybe the real lesson is Clubhouse worked about as well as the idea would let it. It will never scale to billions of users because you’ll never get that many pe

Maybe the real lesson is Clubhouse worked about as well as the idea would let it. It will never scale to billions of users because you’ll never get that many people interested in the idea of eavesdropping in live voice chats.

jsemrau 4y ago
Live streamed opinion panels are a popular thing on Youtube and can work really well if the topic works and the people know how to work the format.
dylan604 4y ago
Isn't that basically what call-in talk shows on AM radio are all about?
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  AM radio listenership in the US is measured in tens of millions a week, and falling. Maybe that can be a business? But I don't see how it could ever be even Twitter-scale.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    If you think that the demand for talk radio is going away, then I'm not really sure what market you're in. So sure, maybe broadcast radio audiences are losing listeners, but the content itself is not. The audience may be moving to other platforms. I did specify AM, but I should have put that in quotes as we are probably all familiar with the type of programming on "AM" radio.
last_responder 4y ago
>It will never scale to billions of users because you’ll never get that many people interested in the idea of eavesdropping in live voice chats. Billions on one topic? I agree. Millions on one topic? Sure that is possible. Just look at talk radio ,which is still alive. Many shows had listeners in the millions and still do,
- potatolicious 4y ago
  Except talk radio evolved in a distinctly asynchronous direction - "talk radio" is now just "podcasts". Clubhouse's format was about synchronous audio - you have to be there at the moment something is said to hear it. They can add a recording feature to it, but then it's just a poor man's podcast platform. > Many shows had listeners in the millions and still do Citation needed? Actual radio listenership has plunged through the floor. Podcasts certainly command that kind of audience size regularly - but again, async, which is a key distinction from the Clubhouse format. More generally media has evolved from synchronous to asynchronous, and everywhere where they've competed the market has chosen in favor of async media. Broadcast TV is (mostly) dead in favor of on-demand streaming, talk radio is (mostly) dead in favor of podcasts. The merits of async are huge in terms of audience size - there's a reason the format itself has pivoted towards podcasts. It feels like Clubhouse's synchronicity is both its greatest asset (i.e., novelty, candidness, spontaneity) and worst liability (i.e., intrinsic limit to audience availability) - and honestly it seems pretty obvious at this point what the net viability of the idea was, given that constraint.
zactato 4y ago
Isn't that podcasts? There are certainly some more topic oriented podcasts, but the more popular ones are basically two famous people chatting on random subjects: eg Joe Rogan
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  There was a spontaneity to Clubhouse that podcasts don't have. I'd get an alert that some neat-o celebrity was talking right now, and I could just tap on it and I'd be tuned in right away.

jsemrau 4y ago

Live streamed opinion panels are a popular thing on Youtube and can work really well if the topic works and the people know how to work the format.

dylan604 4y ago

Isn't that basically what call-in talk shows on AM radio are all about?

nsxwolf 4y ago
AM radio listenership in the US is measured in tens of millions a week, and falling. Maybe that can be a business? But I don't see how it could ever be even Twitter-scale.
- dylan604 4y ago
  If you think that the demand for talk radio is going away, then I'm not really sure what market you're in. So sure, maybe broadcast radio audiences are losing listeners, but the content itself is not. The audience may be moving to other platforms. I did specify AM, but I should have put that in quotes as we are probably all familiar with the type of programming on "AM" radio.

last_responder 4y ago

>It will never scale to billions of users because you’ll never get that many people interested in the idea of eavesdropping in live voice chats. Billions on one topic? I agree. Millions on one topic? Sure that is possible. Just look at talk radio ,which is still alive. Many shows had listeners in the millions and still do,

potatolicious 4y ago
Except talk radio evolved in a distinctly asynchronous direction - "talk radio" is now just "podcasts". Clubhouse's format was about synchronous audio - you have to be there at the moment something is said to hear it. They can add a recording feature to it, but then it's just a poor man's podcast platform. > Many shows had listeners in the millions and still do Citation needed? Actual radio listenership has plunged through the floor. Podcasts certainly command that kind of audience size regularly - but again, async, which is a key distinction from the Clubhouse format. More generally media has evolved from synchronous to asynchronous, and everywhere where they've competed the market has chosen in favor of async media. Broadcast TV is (mostly) dead in favor of on-demand streaming, talk radio is (mostly) dead in favor of podcasts. The merits of async are huge in terms of audience size - there's a reason the format itself has pivoted towards podcasts. It feels like Clubhouse's synchronicity is both its greatest asset (i.e., novelty, candidness, spontaneity) and worst liability (i.e., intrinsic limit to audience availability) - and honestly it seems pretty obvious at this point what the net viability of the idea was, given that constraint.

zactato 4y ago

Isn't that podcasts? There are certainly some more topic oriented podcasts, but the more popular ones are basically two famous people chatting on random subjects: eg Joe Rogan

nsxwolf 4y ago
There was a spontaneity to Clubhouse that podcasts don't have. I'd get an alert that some neat-o celebrity was talking right now, and I could just tap on it and I'd be tuned in right away.