Welcome to the club(house) | Hacker News Reader

Welcome to the club(house)

thisweekintech.substack.com

12 pointscarmenhchung13 comments

Want to know how Clubhouse uses product psychology to draw in users and generate hype? Check out this post.

I kind of admire how it is done, not saying I like it but I respect the player. I really reads like someone reads Nir Eyal's _Hooked_ and executed most of it. Especially the elitism created by invite only, with some kind of 'hacks' for aspiring users like reserving the user name. Then the possibility to be part of a conversation, maybe even with celebrities.

Let's see what kind of platform it becomes, at some point they need to make money and a lot of advertisement will creep in. And then, as the article mentioned, let's see how it works out with hate speech and all the things humans seem to produce whenever they don't fear direct consequences.

I don't think they're trying to draw users in yet? It's invite only isn't it?

Yes it’s invite only. Yes that is a strategy to draw in users, potentially more effectively than being wide open. It’s in the article.

How can that draw users in? The point is it's exclusive. If you read the article it says 'and boy, are invites hard to come by'. So they can get my interest... but they literally can't draw me in can they because I can't join if I wanted to. They can't convert.

It’s in the article

Do you know it's against the site guidelines here to just accuse people of not reading the article rather than actually presenting an argument?

It doesn't matter how attractive a platform is if you simply aren't going to get onto it. Clubhouse can make me interested, but can't actually get me onboarded.

Yeah, it's not in the article.

I can imagine a scenario though, were they gradually increase the number of invites they give out. I think the idea is that the perception of scarcity will persist, even when invites aren't really scarce.

Right - the bulk of the article is about how the “cool factor” of scarcity and variable rewards induce a demand greater than what might be there if they were simply wide open.

So two things: first, they are opening the app up to anyone (and on Android) in the near future (timing TBC of course). It'll be interesting to see if the hype they've built will last all the way through to then. Second, I fully agree with you that opening the app up is actually problematic for them. It's almost like the opposite of the network effect, where I think having more people on the platform is going to potentially make the quality deteriorate. Right now, it feels authentic but somewhat curated (i.e. we have moderators who invite high-profile and very interesting panelists on to speak) - I'm not sure that will be maintained when it becomes a free-for-all.

Sounds to me like the chat boxes we use to have on premium numbers.

I forgot to mention, here's a TLDR visual story if you aren't a fan of long-form: https://stories.nws.ai/1288496439/how-clubhouse-went-viral/

Onboarding? Ups, it is for the chosen ones. Hey you wanna ride in my new cool sports car? Yep. Sorry not here yet.

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