I'm sure after putting up the cash you are handed some janky app worth nothing close to what you paid, much less his supposed investment. While maybe not being illegal, it was incredibly predatory. The 'entrepreneurs' weren't being asked the most basic questions about their business, and were clearly not financially in a place to invest the money he was demanding. Rather than helping them achieve an entrepreneurial dream, he is sucking up the limited money they have (perhaps even inviting them to take on debt) without any real hope of success.
It seems like every channel on Clubhouse is some version of exploitation, whether it's about crypto, your love life, or your money. I don't know how I would moderate that away if I was them, but it seems like the time to do it was several months ago, and now might be too late.
There were exceptions such as famous VCs, authors, and tech people doing Q&A, but everything else felt like content marketers, online course sellers, and crypto scammers having a field day with their sudden access to a lot of bored and curious people.
Outside of a few pre-scheduled and planned Clubhouse events, I never actually found anything organically interesting on the platform.
Then twitter launched "Spaces", meaning people could have a similar experience to clubhouse without building yet another social network.
Since then I have not heard a peep about Twitter Spaces.
Additionally, the high-value people on the platform are themselves often there because of the other high-value people. If most of the rooms you go to speak in are just filled with a thousand fans, maybe you'd be better off using that tile to talk to your half a million followers on Twitter or Instagram. The experience of a small private club simply doesn't scale.
The distinguishing feature of clubhouse wasn't live audio chats, it was Silicon Valley VCs hyping up a valueless app for completely self-interested reason.
There is also this really weird strain of investors in SV who have noticed that journalists have started covering some of the problems in by silicon valley and decided that they - billionaire business owners - are a persecuted minority who must be protected from these evil reporters. And you see from these guys a continual effort to try and replace online media with something they can control.
My favorite line:
> You vow to only work on enterprise saas for the rest of your career
In my mind, it came down to how challenging it would be to produce and monetize content. It's non trivial work. Producing a good radio show that's worth listening to takes a lot of time and effort. Podcasts are a good example here. I think there's data out there that suggests most podcasts don't have more than 1 episode or survive the first year. Without a good way to monetize, it's not worth the effort.
So while easy in the short term for celebrities/influencers/celebrities/VCs to jump on the bandwagon, the effort wouldn't be sustainable or worth it to them in the long run, and then you have a content problem again.
I also experienced some dark onboarding patterns while I checked it out that make me suspect their growth numbers were a bit over inflated, in an ask for forgiveness later kind of situation.
I don’t think their decline is any great mystery. Concern about the pandemic declined, people started going out again, and stopped listening in on audio chats on the Internet.
Twitter Spaces is not doing great either, but it doesn’t really matter because it’s just a feature, not a whole business.
That’s what made it so exciting in the beginning… making it feel like you were part of an exclusive club even if you weren’t a famous person. Eventually the hype fades because the bar lowers, and the most interesting people move on.
Your point about Covid is also fair… the timing was good.
As soon as I started it, it was fixed to an iPhone window.
This was about a year ago. No apps should ever do that. It means the app is crap quality.
I nuked it, and forgot about it.
I’ve been writing iOS apps for many years, and have never written one that doesn’t immediately adapt to an iPad. Even my cruddiest, written-in-two-hours test harnesses run on iPads without that ghastly “2X” button. Heck, my very first ObjC “hello world” app adapted to iPads. It’s pretty much built into the SDK.
TBH, I’m not even sure how to get the 2X to appear.
But it’s not my app, or my money. I just didn’t want to waste my time on a bad app. I doubt that I’m the reason they face-planted.
Pandemic ⤵ Clubhouse ⤵ NFT ⤵
I call it the #Clubhouse Correlation.
> Project management has never been easier
> We bring the flow to your software team's workflow. Plan, collaborate, build, and measure success with Shortcut.
https://www.inputmag.com/culture/russians-ukraine-war-clubho...
https://topwhich.com/the-second-life-of-clubhouse-the-forgot...
JIRA too complex.
Shortcut shits right in the sweet spot. Try it. It works well with small 2 man teams, and large 65 man teams.
As predicted in [0] of its questionable valuation and the competitors surrounding and copying it makes you wonder if they will be still around in a few years time.
> What went wrong?
Late release of Android app. (It was iOS only) and was invite-only for longer than a year and even after competitors copied them. And yes. As all predicted here [1]. So this outcome was really unsurprising and expected.
The network has now been poached to death by the typical influencer expert user looking to build a brand or grow some kind of following.
This happens to all new social networks now because new and novel marketing channels give the best ROI, and influencers want to suck these dry before users become harder to influence.
It's been some time, but I can vividly remember his advice on exploring new social networks in order to generate ROI on new marketing channels. Basically what you are saying but with a lot of inferred 'bro' in the process.
The moment Clubhouse opened its doors to the gen pop, it was doomed.
The good stuff (i.e. An Atlantic writer, former ambassador, dude from think-tank) audience is too niche.
Discovery problem: you never know when good stuff is on.
Crap problem: so much hustle/culture BS.
They now have 'pre-recorded' sessions so you can listen in, which is very helpful.
But still a giant discovery problem.
I really enjoyed some content, but it's hard to find.
And big content makers want to get their stuff replayed, so the 'live' aspect is minimal.
I'm not sure if this model can work in the end.
The exclusive access model is a double edged sword apparently
https://onezero.medium.com/what-happened-to-clubhouse-b347fe...
This isn't meant as a quip or sarcasm, it is actually what a lot of people thought back in its "golden age", reading through Twitter and other social networks. For a lot of people in the US, Android phone == poor, no taste. iPhones are status symbols.
I can agree with that and it is exactly why I never want one. Cheap Chinaphone, never paying for or subscribing to apps and not giving a shit about optics. That is my special snowflake fashion statement.
Because twitter literally took Clubhouse’s business.
"Dropbox is a feature, not a product" - Steve Jobs
Now they won't even mention it. I hate (and laugh) that they don't take a stand on what they promote. Their tweets so ephemeral. Yesterday it was Clubhouse, today it's bitcoin, tomorrow it's xyz. No spine. Just surviving via capitalism with hit or miss investments.
I’ve met a handful of people who I now consider good friends (despite not having met them in person yet).
However (and I don’t want to be too critical as I don’t have internal insights or data), they had/have a few glaring issues that ended up pushing away many of the people I met during my time on the app.
* They let mis/disinformation run rampant, particularly regarding (but not limited to) COVID vaccines. I worked with healthcare professionals to combat this misinformation by running room with science based evidence (with none of us getting compensated, of course) but we had no help from anyone at Clubhouse themselves. They seemed happy to allow rooms that most of us believed would lead to deaths to stay open, presumably because they got a lot of engagement at a time when Clubhouse was clearly losing steam.
* When I joined, the variety of rooms was massive. I enjoyed start up rooms, JavaScript rooms, science rooms. But over time, as people left, those rooms disappeared. And the rooms that grew were the ones which the room owners knew would get engagement — general drama. This person fighting with another person. Anti-vaccine misinformation. General topics that didn’t have any substance but would provide entertainment because of the disagreements you heard on stage. Fun for a while, but not a long term plan.
* Clubhouse didn’t incentivise “good” rooms. The rooms I enjoyed had world-leading experts talking about exciting topics. But Clubhouse’s Creator First program didn’t seem interested in those at all. This program was more focused on novel entertainment ideas, and in the end became a bit of a running joke with users because it ultimately did nothing for creators — even the ones who were part of it.
* Of course, a big problem Clubhouse had was beyond its control. As lockdowns eased, people had less time on their own which meant less time on Clubhouse.
In the end, what drove most of my friends away, and what caused me to stop visiting was the notification spam.
So many people I knew turned their notifications off within a week or two of joining because the notifications you’d receive on your phone were relentless. There were minimal controls provided, so your option was either to allow them all or turn them all off. I didn’t mind them because I was enjoying Clubhouse, and after a while I figured out the right setting that allowed me to get notifications that interested me but not the more spammy ones. But that took me a long time, and I’m tech savvy. Many people aren’t and don’t have the patience, so they just turned them all off. Without that daily/hourly reminder, they started to forget about the app.
And I ended up being one of them. At the start of 2022, my perfectly curated notification options started to be ignored and I was suddenly receiving 100+ Clubhouse notifications per day. I thought maybe it was a bug (other people on Twitter had noticed the same — almost like a switch had been flipped), but after a few weeks I was still being bombarded with notifications and I had no other option but to turn them off completely. Then… I stopped using Clubhouse. The people I had enjoyed spending time with were no longer there — driven away by disinterest and drama. My efforts to make the platform better in some small way were ignored. And I no longer had the constant reminder to visit.
I still open the app every day or two to see what’s in the hallway, but not much has changed for the better. I sometimes have private rooms with friends for a quick chat, but even that’s becoming less frequent.
It’s a shame. I don’t remember a social network providing as much entertainment and excitement to me as Clubhouse did around this time last year. But it’s just not the same so I’ve mostly said goodbye.
My favorite example was when there was some comradery in a room about a guy divorcing his wife because she got COVID vaccinated and there was some unfounded ideas about a sexually transmitted thing about the vaccines. It would be interesting if they would allow the audience to have some passive feedback, like thumbs down "I disagree with the stage." Then at least it wouldn't feel like an echo chamber by the loudest while half the audience is just listening curiously in disbelief.
Was the room you mention based on the false information that the COVID vaccine causes you to be HIV+? I remember that was a talking point for a few weeks.
I agree — I really like the emoji responses you can give in a Twitter Space. Clubhouse does at least now have a chatroom for everyone in the room, including the audience, if the creator enables it.
- Competition (Callin, Twitter Spaces). Callin has unique content. Twitter Spaces has far higher reach and engagement because people already have Twitter on their phone. Notably, Twitter wanted to acquire Clubhouse and Callin's investor wanted to invest in Clubhouse.
- There wasn't much focus on content quality. Large rooms need better moderation tools, etc.
- One of my favorite shows (Good Time) isn't on anymore. That was probably the most popular show, so it's perplexing.