[system16]

I find Clubhouse interesting in that its the first social media app I've tried that I really could not understand the widespread appeal, even if it didn't appeal to me personally.

The rooms I did listen in on seemed to be full of people promoting themselves to each other. Most seemed like almost caricatures of Bay Area VC or entrepreneur types, or the most left-leaning Twitterati. I just kept asking myself, who would want to listen or engage with this?

Clearly I'm the minority as it seems to be blowing up.

[ignoramous]

As a sports fan, I can see why Clubhouse solves a real need.

After a major sporting or political event, a lot of people tune into News to listen to expert opinion. For sporting events, people even want to see what other fans are saying. You can see an explosion of activity in related subs on reddit: For example, r/tennis during ATP 1000+ events, or r/soccer every weekend.

There's always drama and there's always an urge to find out what others are thinking right at the moment; or in a few cases, the urge to share what you are thinking, as well.

I've been on r/tennis many a time to know how much redditors complain that the expert analysis post-match or the commentary during the match wasn't any good, and that they'd rather prefer some other commentator who's unfortunately not employed by the Network that owns broadcast rights in their country.

I believe clubhouse is an interesting clone of Reddit, Twitter / Instagram, and YouTube.

I imagine Clubhouse Live where folks listen to experts chime in real-time as events unfold; Clubhouse Roundtables where experts invite themselves and aren't beholden to the Media companies selecting the panels; Clubhouse Stations where folks tune in to listen to "Networks" broadcasting high-quality content.

The key innovation is Clubhouse is voice-only: Voice is faster and substantially low effort than text. With voice (unlike with video), there's substantially less pressure and more comfort.

You're right that as the community grows, it'd keep getting harder to surface quality content, but that's a good problem to have and almost every major Social media has that but are doing just fine. I hope Clubhouse doesn't turn grow to be as disappointing as Quora has.

[petercooper]

I imagine Clubhouse Live where folks listen to experts chime in real-time as events unfold.

I'm not so sure about the 'experts' yet, but I saw rooms spring up around the storming of the Capitol as well as for numerous Premier League football matches so far (I follow quite a few Brits though).

[devdas]

Voice is substantially slower to consume than text.

[mycall]

Text reco and jump ahead can definitely quicken the process.

[dakial1]

  |The rooms I did listen in on seemed to be full of people promoting themselves to each other.

This is the image I have from people in SV, every time that I talk with someone from SF/SV tech/startup world I can expect to hear: - Their romanticized accomplishments - Name dropping some SF/SV pop star

It must be very tiring to have social interactions like that all the time...

[Enginerrrd]

That's how my interactions with East Coasters always seemed to go for most of my life. It always seemed strangely artificial and out of place... and also off-putting in the sense that they seemed to be indicating they would look down on people that didn't go to an ivy league school or something. It seemed like a handshake where you get assessed for your social standing in every new interaction. There's definitely plenty of social stratification on the West Coast too, but it seemed more implicit rather than explicit. I suppose the process is a natural one and you could make an argument for either way of going about it, but the East Coast style of it always rubbed me the wrong way.

Frankly though, I can't stand a lot of the attitudes from the SF/SV area either. There's a lot of self-righteousness and self-signed certificates of moral authority in that crowd. I'm not a fan. People are allowed to see the world differently, and for most of the things I believe are right, I won't pretend to be so certain of my the moral absoluteness of my beliefs to insist anyone who disagrees is inherently less intelligent, wrong, or beneath me but that seems to be the status quo in the Bay.

[solumos]

Same. What really seals the "echo chamber"-ness for me, is that they have a priority on their "about" page claiming they're serious about inclusion, yet it's still an iOS-only invite-only beta.

[astrea]

I mean, you said it yourself, it is a beta.

[petercooper]

iOS-only aside, Clubhouse is one of the most diverse modern social apps I've been on. As a white man, I often seem to be in the racial or gender minority which is refreshing and helps me hear more interesting conversations and viewpoints.

[bschne]

Joined yesterday after it started taking off in part of Europe for some reason or other.

First impression is that it's nice that people talk longer, don't cut each other off as much as in other debates, etc. but it definitely sounds like mostly berlin tech entrepreneurs & VCs (and some tech-adjacent politicians/journalists/...) at this point, and the "diversity" on panels is somewhat superficial (people from mildly different backgrounds who think alike vs. people from whatever background with deeper differences in viewpoints). That being said I also randomly ended up in a room with improvised music & poetry, so there do seem to be different things going on.

I can see myself using this if the content diversifies further into different topics, e.g. I'd enjoy loose discussions about e.g. academic / more technical topics, etc. For now it sounds mostly like your run of the mill panel discussion at a big tech conf., which can be inspiring for a bit but not everyday.

[xiaolingxiao]

Could I ask you why/how it started taking off in Europe? Was there a specific big name who joined, pulling everyone in? For example, when Joe Budden joined C.H. in early October, he mobilized many people in the ATL music scene to join. And there was a sudden influx of music industry and Music adjacent people.

[mintone]

They're quite cleverly leveraging the invites to give them exponential growth, so it has exploded this month - it looks like everyone is being given 2 invitations. I'm London based and signed up for the waitlist in maybe September last year and then forgot about it - someone I know bumped me up at the weekend (which doesn't cost an invitation). Within 2 days of my joining I'd say about 10 other people in my contacts have joined too. I'd say it's less big names and more FOMO.

Interestingly the person who bumped me up appears to have had an outsized effect on which rooms I see.

[bschne]

TBH I don't know, it seems to be mostly tech and tech policy people, but the hype with people mentioning it on LinkedIn et a. has gotten to the point where mainstream media is covering it.

One thing I've noticed: If one of my contacts signs up for the waitlist, I can give them access w/o using up one of my two invites, so it might be that they just relaxed the exclusiveness on that front to push it.

[Jommi]

It started from berling tech scene with the recent success of german entrepreneurs in US.

[cvhashim]

I thought that too when I first started using Clubhouse. I really couldn’t see the value in it as I don’t care for VC takes or opinions. If you ignore all the VCs, wantreprenuers, and influencers, you can find interesting rooms that discuss niche and interesting topics. Just follow people and groups which appeal to you.

[petercooper]

Clubhouse has a rather intriguing "hallway" that varies hugely depending on who you follow. I encountered a lot of similarly low value rooms for a while but once I rounded out my followings more, the value shot up and I get much better rooms recommended now. This seems to be a common experience.

One thing to avoid is following all of the default suggested people. This really messed up my feed. Once I cleaned it up, happier times followed.

[xiaolingxiao]

Who do you follow? I follow people like Eric Weinstein and block all the self promo people shilling get rich quick. And my hallway is still bad.

[mycall]

Do you have any people in particular you suggest?

[scilro]

Clubhouse seems to attract the extraverted and narcissistic, those who live to self-promote and "hustle." So for white people, that's VCs, and then there's the analogous types of Black people.

As far as politics it doesn't seem as left-wing as Twitter, I haven't seen any socialists or communists yet. I've seen a lot of standard liberal types but then also people with idiosyncratic politics (Black people who think BLM is a Soros conspiracy for example).