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Comment by manigandham | Hacker News Reader

What a strange app. Are people really that amazed by conference calls? It seems the entire play right now is exclusivity, not product.

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It's more like a live podcasting platform. I joined and gave it an honest shot, but I just don't have time to sit and listen to people ramble. The 1-2 hours per day I do have need to be spent listening to something purposeful and produced, like an actual podcast or audiobook.

I also think CH is very limited in the content it provides. At least that's my estimation after using the app for a few months. Either the algorithm is failing at showing me content I care about, or the platform is failing at attracting content I care about. Either way, the people I follow don't produce content, and I don't produce content, so the content I receive is mostly horrendous garbage.

Having said that, I could see content selection improving once CH finally gives up the invite gimmick. Something like a moderated panel of experts talking live with audience participation _sounds_ interesting, but the experts have to be experts and they have to interesting. How people can listen to celebrities or random nobodies ramble for hours on end about nothing is beyond me, but that's like 99% of the content I see currently on CH.

I think the “live podcasting” is a post-hoc rationalisation. In my experience it’s much closer to a conference call than a podcast.

Specifically, lack of script, lack of direction, low audio quality, “am I muted?”, and people talking over each other.

Twitter in the early days was known for celebrities turning up and replying to or even following non-celebrities. Then Quora was known for this. Both outgrew this quickly - celebrities may still do these things, but proportionally less so and it’s not the draw to the platform.

I think Clubhouse needs to figure out what it’s draw is after this phase because right now it’s just a conference call with a celebrity.

Clubhouse's advantage over Twitter is that it's not recorded and you can't get reply guys. I know minor bluechecks on Twitter who are pretty annoyed by the platform because someone always yells at them or quotes them a month later no matter what they say. It's nice to have things disappear.

…It's really not fun to listen to, though, it is just a WebEx meeting with even worse audio.

Yeah that's a good point about reply-guys.

As much as I think that sort of moderation is great to have, I wonder how much it will limit their growth (which might be ok).

It's also a balance because if there is no interaction, if it's really not a chat room and is just a live show then I'd much rather just listen to a podcast on my time, at my convenience, with better audio quality and "is my mic on" edited out.

It really is strange, I can only credit its success so far to the fact that it's tapping into people's primal urge to be able to literally shout down the opposition instead of just metaphorically shout them down. I don't know why anyone would find the format of being forced to debate on the spot better than having the time to construct posts at your leisure. Every clip or story I've heard/seen come out of the app has been a completely mess.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freestyle_rap

It's very early success (first 6 months) was because of VC hype [1]. You couldn't go anywhere online without hearing how Clubhouse is the next big SV social media bet. I'm guessing a lot of that hype has died down as users find out the app really isn't that useful.

1. You do know CH is valued at $1bn? I mean, the absolute insanity of this can't be understated. Their success is entirely manufactured https://pitchbook.com/newsletter/clubhouse-picks-up-new-fund...

That's because VCs got to use it, and nobody has a larger ego or desire for other people to hear them talk than a VC who's just been paid a lot to spend other people's money.

Discord took the concept of "voice-only" communication software and extended it to a full integrated solution.

This is just, yet another "voice-only" communication app, except it's iOS exclusive, invite only and seems to focus on features that definitely have no place in a "developing" platform.

Brought to you by the authors of “this Dropbox thing is basically rsync and a bunch of shell scripts”

What complexity is being simplified here?

I've been using it as a language learning app. I just join some channels in my target language and listen to various people's voices and accents and try to understand them. Every once in a while if I'm feeling brave I'll raise my hand and utter a couple of sentences. The topics are simple and often very repetitive, which makes it well suited for practicing languages.

The "regular" channels didn't feel very valuable to me after a week of use or so, and a lot of them seemed exclusively made for the purpose of gaining more followers (either on CH, IG or Twitter, etc.).

I see this misconception a lot when new startups start to gain momentum, the idea that it only makes sense for completely novel concepts to take off.

Clubhouse fills a specific niche that doesn't have a strong incumbent yet. It's essentially live podcasts/fireside chats where listeners can chime in.

As of right now, there are big players in podcast platforms and conference calls for work, but none whose platform is specifically built around the live podcast with interactivity from listeners option.

Successful companies aren't built around making something totally novel that's never been done before, this isn't the Nobel Prize. They're built out of creating the best and stickiest product/service for a use case that doesn't have one yet.

Exactly, celebrities plus wanna be celebrities plus startups.

Mumble + new rich = this

It's not a conference call. It's a moderated panel, and they have many famous / interesting people participating on their platform.

Aren't conference calls also moderated? Otherwise they would just be a broadcast.

That’s the gist of it. A moderated conference call with famous people on it. So it is like a podcast/conference call.

I tried it, but got bored of it :(. I think it’s because of the live nature of it and the fact there could be so many guests on at once.

I think clubhouse style audio and live stream selling (like qvc but on Instagram or Tik Tok) are the current and future trends.

No. A conference call allows anyone to talk whenever they want.

Conference calls also have hosts who can mute and manage the guests. We had conferencing 2.0 about 5 years ago with the likes of Uberconference, and now 3.0 with Zoom. What is actually new?

It’s a panel discussion, with an optional mic that can be explicitly passed around. There are bios on everyone that you can click around, no video, many rooms you can join arranged by subject matter and people, and a social network that includes many A-listers. The entire premise is different than a conference call. I don’t know what else to say… I’m guessing you haven’t tried it if you keep saying it’s the same thing.

So it's an un-edited Podcast you can only listen to live?

Or I guess if you're closer to my age, it's like a radio station you can't listen to without a password?

> without a password

Without a super secret invite!

Have you ever been to a panel discussion? It’s like that.

Indeed. Except, the value add is that anyone can run their own password-protected radio show, and the hope is "anyone" includes a lot of popular people.

It's audio snapchat, which everyone wants to join because all the cool people are also on it.

Not sure why this is getting downvoted. The main success factor for Clubhouse is the social graph. It is entirely possible to have access to people like Paris Hilton, Anthony Scaramucci, or MC Hammer among other notable people.

It’s strange to me that both you and I are getting downvoted… probably from people who haven’t actually used it? If you do, then it’s obvious how it’s not a conference call at all. It’s a panel that you might be able to participate in, which isn’t the same thing at all. Anyone can talk whenever they want on a conference call. The moderator chooses who talks in clubhouse.

There is conference call software that only allows a panel to talk. It's used to give remote presentations to a large group of people.

For example Webex has a product for that, as well as Bluejeans.

Conference calls have had guest management and moderation features for decades. Also several dozen social platforms already support livestreams with more functionality like video, files, chat, etc.

It’s a social graph that’s divided by time zone.

I can’t be connected to these people because I live in Europe and so times when I can reasonably be on a phone call do not overlap with theirs.

Twitter on the other hand... I can be connected with these people and not only can I “catch up” later, but reading Twitter in bed is more socially acceptable than being on a conference call.

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