Ask HN: What happened to Clubhouse? I've not been following its development. I do not hear about anymore. I guess the hype has died out. Is it still popular? Is it still gaining users? What went wrong? Have more viable competitors risen? |
Ask HN: What happened to Clubhouse? I've not been following its development. I do not hear about anymore. I guess the hype has died out. Is it still popular? Is it still gaining users? What went wrong? Have more viable competitors risen? |
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.
Never heard of Clubhouse.
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.
- 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.
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.
I've only ever seen Twitter Spaces not Clubhouse, that's why I asked.
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.
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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 major problem with any internet community, even moderated ones. It's just too much text, too many people, and no real conversations occur.
You could even see it decades ago on IRC servers, which solidifies my view that it's a fundamental social limitation not a technology problem. Groups always split from the #general channels into their own smaller cliques because once a server grew large enough, even a moderated #general was impossible to communicate in.
Too many people in one space is just not conducive to conversation and you also no longer get the self-moderation of pseudo social connections. Since there's no real conversations occurring in #general/any busy chat, it's just lots of, there's less need for people to care about what they say in regards to it's implication on others.
The absolute extreme of this phenomenon is a busy twitch chat, which is a sight to behold.
On the rare occasion that I click on a Quora link, I am immediately harassed by a nagging registration popup, further fuelling my hatred of Quora and immediately pressing back and appending 'reddit' to my search term.
It’s hard to argue with “It makes money!”.
As long as people are willing to pay for junk, then there will always be a firehose of junk.
It’s still junk, though; even if it wins.
Almost every project I write is filled with compromise; especially as it nears release, and I always have a powerful urge to rewrite it from scratch, but I don’t feel shame. It’s not junk. It represents a sincere effort to do great work.
That’s one reason that I’m so glad to be out of the rat race, and doing my own thing. I feel dirty, if I am knowingly writing junk. My work is a craft, and a labor of love. I get great personal satisfaction from it. Making money, and “beating the competition,” aren’t even minor factors.
You can’t shovel shit, without getting it on you.
Silly that you're getting downvoted - especially when no one is posting any reasons for their downvote
If I want the app to only run on iPhone, then I’d sniff for it on startup, and present an alert (or, more likely, in my case, a screen), saying “iPhone only.” I own a couple of apps that do exactly that (not ones I wrote). There may be a way to provision the app, so it is not even made available on the App Store, for iPads. I don’t know. I’ve never done that. I think I have a couple of phone apps that have never even been made available for my iPads.
But an app like Clubhouse should run fine on iPad. I can’t think of any technical reason it shouldn’t run on iPad.
I have had dealings with extremely low-cost outsourcing shops, though, and they have a nasty habit of giving us exactly what we asked for; nothing more, nothing less. If the spec said “iPhone Only,” then I could see them turning that checkbox off, as it’s cheaper than writing a sniffer.
If someone does a bad job in one place (especially a highly visible place), then I generally assume that I am seeing the tip of the iceberg, and that they do a bad job, everywhere else. It’s been a fairly good assumption, in my experience.
I just feel that a “major buzz” app, like Clubhouse, should not present that iPhone resolution screen. It’s a perfect example of a brand-wrecking footgun.
"Pitt...said when he was shown the script, he told the Coens he did not know how to play the part because the character was such an idiot: "There was a pause, and then Joel goes...'You'll be fine'."
Already we saw sites like Medium attract lower quality content than blogs that require a certain amount of intelligence to set up.
Audio and video communication online is something Marshall McLuhan warned you about: take a look at TikTok if you don't believe me.
> the traditional internet required that you be literate, be able to write, have an IQ > 45.
No it didn't. The internet required you to know how to setup a server and hosting. If you knew how, you could serve the most illiterate, badly thought out crap ever, and nobody would stop you.
You think that you needed to be litterate, because you've confirmation-biased yourself into thinking that you were 'special'/'gifted' for having read some nginx-manuals and setup your own blog. And now that everybody has access to the thing that made you feel 'special' you act childish and try to degrade that achievement of others.
"yeah you write for your own blog, but did you use MEDIUM while doing it? What a poser! If you're a real writer, like ME, you'd host your own blog in the 90s".
> Already we saw sites like Medium attract lower quality content than blogs that require a certain amount of intelligence to set up.
Who made you the arbiter of quality content? Did you ever self-reflect and realize that it might not be about quality, but rather your personal preference?
Are you too stupid to see that people might not share your views at all? That what they think is quality-content you might think is shit? And that what you think is quality-content others might think is shit?
1. Back in the 90’s it was Apache, not NGINX. 2. Cool kids today make a blog w/ Jamstack and don’t mess w/ NGINX. 3. People who blog on medium seem to be more hung up on getting a domain name than anything else (either $10 a year is not worth it or paying $10 a year means you’ve been ‘canceled’ by big tech or something…)
The ignorance of those people is not so much technical but in the domain of marketing and branding. Like ‘data scientists’ who think they are too good to run unit tests or type ‘git commit’ they think being high status is letting other people do things for you, so in their bizzaro world being on medium makes you look like a somebody and having your own domain makes you a nerd, a tool or something like that.
Thank God people who won’t register a domain name won’t figure out how to make a crypto wallet so they’ll always be looking from the outside in, wishing they had a bored ape of their own.
Also, isolated to me or a tiny subset of users - the only way to sign in is with a OTP sent via SMS. The delivery is very spotty for my carrier for some unknown reason (other services can deliver fine). So like right now, I can't log in and have to wait until they quietly restore delivery.
It's unfortunate because the stability of the Clubhouse app is far better than Twitter Spaces. A group I'm with has spent promoting events and it's embarrassing and annoying to have the Twitter Space unexpectedly end for everyone if the app of the "host" crashes.
There are a lot of thing's an author would need to be deliberate about communicating in order to relay the same message and context as an audio message. In other words, I would not say an audio-only conversation can be said to be movable to any other medium successfully.
I wish there were better tools for converting audio into other formats you can digest and still obtain all the nuance. It takes a certain kind of energy to communicate verbally, and I can assure you that most people would rather type than speak if the nuances of speech arent relevant to the conversation they are trying to have. ("most" of the newer generations, at least)
I know, right
>> "What serious subject has only video tutorials and no text/diagrams?"
This sets us up to be at odds because now I feel like I have to mind-read what you consider serious to not have you dismiss any example I offer. Do you consider Minecraft serious? It's Ground Zero for this kind of thing.
>> "I also don't understand your argument about traffic to text at all, we're on a high-traffic mostly-text site right now with plenty of how-to style content."
"nearly"
Have you ever looked at the new link page? Few things get traction. And HN's patience with self-promotion would falter fast if I linked off to a Patreon/Ko-fi/whatever any time I gave good advice. I've only ever had one person wander in through the link in my profile and support my Patreon. I appreciate people who can afford to spend their time going deep here while developing the skills and having the experiences that backstop that advice, but most people are far from that rarified position. I can't do the kind of zero-BS how-to stuff I want to do, get traction in the modern media environment (meaning audio and/or video), and not get some kind of compensation for it.
You aren't being serious. Shoo.
I thought I was the weird one with my ultra-succinct communication but I now know the endless walls of text reflect the corrupting effect of needing to please search engines.
The actual content was a couple of shell commands and like 3 lines of JSON
site:quora.com OR site:stackoverflow.com search query