Having no interest in what Clubhouse is advertising to offer, I don't know that I've even seen a screenshot until reading TFA. And I'll admit that I probably don't run in the right circles anymore to judge the popularity of Clubhouse based on what my friends are doing.
So I'll ask: was Clubhouse ever all that popular? One doesn't need to be very cynical to understand why it started as invite-only. Were they able to leverage that FOMO into anything resembling a user base? Or is this just 2021's more complicated cousin to the Yo app[0], in that there's a bunch of hype up front but no real substance? TFA makes it sound like it's the app for narcissists and their hangers-on.
I used CH for a little while, but my CH experience was soon overrun by marketers, self-promoters and the wrong kind of cryptocurrency people (wrong kind = people who are only into cryptocurrency because they want to make $$$, and they will evangelize cryptocurrency for all the wrong reasons).
So I lost interest and stopped using it.
But it’s hard to tell from an experience like that, if it’s indicative of CH as a whole or if I just ended up in the wrong circles on CH.
Compare to Reddit for example, I subscribe to very specific subreddits that are about my interests and generally have good luck finding interesting things to read and to watch on Reddit. Whereas if all you ever saw was the front page of Reddit, you’d have a very different experience. So maybe CH is the same way, maybe there is some really good stuff I am missing out on, who knows. And maybe it’s all trash. Either way, I’m not inclined to spend any more time on CH in order to try and find something that may or may not exist. Chasing Nessie or Big Foot would be more productive use of my time :p
However, if someone told me about some actually good rooms then it’d be different and I’d be willing to check those out. So I’m not completely writing it off. Just saying, I’m not going to spend more time there on my own trying to find good rooms.
Yes, it’s absolutely the same. We host a ton of fascinating discussions all the time from orbital megastructures to cities on Venus and few people join us. Which is okay, we aren’t doing it for the numbers
Honestly I have the same doubts and still can't help but come to the conclusion that it wasn't much besides a very aggressive marketing campaign. It felt like every post about Clubhouse had that one person talking about how lifechanging and unique Clubhouse was supposed to be using variations of the same examples.
Also the period of many articles that tried to tell us about the massive success.
Given how extremely fast that fad died I can't help but come the conclusion that the Clubhouse hype was mostly artificial.
Shows how disconnected investors and tech news can be from reality. Seems to me like way more people talked about Clubhouse than actually used it.
The hype was mostly from building manufactured exclusivity. Influencers got invited and then made a big thing about it, people that chase influencer content desperately wanted to be in the app.
It's all just manufactured excitement. A new vehicle for influencers to pump content. If you're not an influencer, or not interested in listening to influencers, there's really nothing there for you.
I remember, a few years ago, the entire tech press being unabatedly abuzz about Bloom Energy. It confused me until I realized it was a press pool coördinated by Sequoia. The gushing about Clubhouse may be organic. But Andreessen Horowitz bet big on the company. They're one of the media savvier shops on Sand Hill.
This sort of media blitz happens way more than people know. Some are very good and subtle. But many are just 'out of the blue so and so is talking it up'. It is kind of the same game as spam. If you get enough out there and many still walk away you can sometimes get a bit of sticky and make money. It is a fascinating style of pump and dump.
I wish I could tell you, there is something to be said about 1) being live with no recording so records of dissent dont exist and 2) like the other commenter said slow government response
I suspect it's a lot of small things and social network multiplicative effect
So, this is an unencrypted (not end-to-end at least), intercept-ready chat network that was popular among (a) people with social status in the US, who might be of intelligence interest (sc. Elon Musk), and (b) people in a nation state that is definitely of interest to US intelligence? Is that right?
So I'll ask: was Clubhouse ever all that popular? One doesn't need to be very cynical to understand why it started as invite-only. Were they able to leverage that FOMO into anything resembling a user base? Or is this just 2021's more complicated cousin to the Yo app[0], in that there's a bunch of hype up front but no real substance? TFA makes it sound like it's the app for narcissists and their hangers-on.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_%28app%29