> I heard him make the claim that Clubhouse has bigger potential than text-based social platforms, because talking has less friction than writing
Finding people that talk about stuff is one thing, finding people who like to listen to other people talking is the other. Unfortunately, listening has much higher friction than reading.
>Unfortunately, listening has much higher friction than reading.
Sure, for a minority of consumers like yourself.
However, for most people that make up the mass audience... they do not like to read long-form text whether it is articles in Vanity Fair, The Atlantic or books.
Yes, people would rather read the text of a temperature and weather forecast on their smartphone -- instead of listen to a long-winded presentation by a tv news meteorologist. But when we compare apples-to-apples of long-form high word count type of content, an audio medium for listening is preferred by mass consumers.
Most would prefer hearing Joe Rogan and his guest speak rather than reading 50000+ word transcripts of a 3 hour conversation. Likewise, talk radio is very popular and has higher audience counts than the circulation numbers of long-form magazines:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-listened-to_radio...
Also, reading has its own "frictions" because text is missing tonal inflection, length of pauses, deadpan vs incredulous delivery, etc.
So how does clubhouse change the game? We already have youtube and podcasts. You can listen to Joe Rogan over bluetooth in your car. You can even ask Siri to play it. What is clubhouse doing that makes it easier to access or produce high word count content in audio form? How is clubhouse helping creators monetize their content? Why would I go to clubhouse instead of patreon for the type of content you describe?
From what I can see, podcasts vs Clubhouse is a bit like Youtube (without streaming) vs Twitch. One is more spontaneous and interactive whereas the other is consuming content.
I'm guessing it's the sense that users get to participate as well (probably more than a normal stream or Twitch stream) which interests people, the value proposition is being able to contribute to a Joe Rogan podcast as a roundtable discussion instead of just listening to it.
Not a clubhouse expert but it seems clubhouse is better for “spontaneous” conversations/talks, as in I don’t have to upload it as a podcast perhaps do post-processing etc to get my content out.
It also allows you to promote your audience to speakers so it’s more of an interactive podcasts, so you can actually ask questions to a panel or the speaker.
Again, haven’t used it much but this is what I understand Clubhouse brings to the table.
> as in I don’t have to upload it as a podcast perhaps do post-processing etc to get my content out
That sounds like shirking the responsibility of not wasting the listener's time, i.e. lowering the barrier to production at the cost of raising the friction of consumption. For the app to be popular to use — rather than just popular to publish on — wouldn't you want the opposite?
Or, to put that another way: wouldn't "an edited recording of a talk recorded on Clubhouse, posted to YouTube" become a more popular way to consume Clubhouse content, than actually going on Clubhouse? And would this not kill any hope Clubhouse would have of ever monetizing, since there would be no users on the app itself to ever show ads to?
(I think this is truly the thing that really did "kill" Vine, in the end: there was no reason for most people — who are not, themselves, performers — to engage with Vines on Vine, when they could just engage with Vine compilations on YouTube. The creators saw the writing on the wall and sold it. TikTok came up with a better model, "democratizing" Vine's professionally-produced-funny-6-second-clip model into the much more widely-engaged-with "clip of a pretty person being silly with platform-licensed music in the background" model.)
> That sounds like shirking the responsibility of not wasting the listener's time
This is why I don't consume podcasts. If it's worth saying, then it's worth making a transcript, which I can skim (or top-and-tail) in a tenth of the time it takes to listen to the whole thing.
Popehat was a blog that I used to visit regularly. Then Ken decided he was too busy to write, and most of his content is now some unscripted podcast - the blog now gets maybe a couple of posts a year, apart from the links to his podcasts.
Sure but the argument in the comment I was responding to was “look at all this long-form produced spoken content, clubhouse can tap that”. I don't experience much (any) spontaneous short form spoken content on the internet. The interactive element is interesting if that can somehow become relevant.
Part of the idea was that it would be more authentic and kinder. When people are completely anonymized they are free to be their worst selves. Your voice is personal. Its slower though because its more 'single threaded' for lack of a better term, than a reddit sub.
> Part of the idea was that it would be more authentic and kinder.
Did that work out? All I know about clubhouse in this regard is stuff you you can find at google searches for e.g. "clubhouse misogynist", "clubhouse racist", "clubhouse anti-semitic"
I have never been there, and part of the reason is the reputation that it has from afar be being the opposite of "kind".
Wikipedia entry for "Clubhouse (app)" says as much in para 2.
Maybe, being not anonymous isn't a cure-all for bad behaviour. After all, there were racists before they could be anonymous online.
>What is clubhouse doing that makes it easier to access or produce high word count content in audio form? How is clubhouse helping creators
I'm not sure there's an exact parallel of "creator" in the Clubhouse paradigm. I'm not a Clubhouse user so my info is 2nd-hand based on how others describe it but this is my understanding of its original differentiation from podcast platforms and Youtube.
Consider the scenario of:
- Interesting Person A is not a podcast host or content producer. Person A also does not write text articles and opinion pieces in magazines or newspapers.
- Interesting Person B is also not a podcast producer.
- Person A and Person B can talk to each other in a public performance setting on an adhoc basis with audience interaction. Yes, Youtube livestream can also have multiple talking heads but that's video. With Clubhouse being audio, it lowers the barrier for participants who are ok with speaking but don't want to be seen.
- this means "interesting" people who are not podcasters like CEO Tesla Elon Musk can talk to CEO Robinhood Vladimir Tenev in a public forum which attracts an audience. Neither are of them are the "host" or the "guest" in a traditional sense. Neither have to set up a podcast or "upload" their conversation.
That was the original hype with it. The exclusive "invite-only" of famous people created buzz. Maybe the COVID lockdown and bored consumers looking for new entertainment helped boost its initial audience count. However, that doesn't mean the idea of scaling that up by "letting everybody in" ... a.k.a. "The Eternal September" makes Clubhouse more valuable. It seems to have the opposite effect.
> Neither are of them are the "host" or the "guest" in a traditional sense.
This can be entertaining for a bit, but after a while turns into an unstructured dialog ... nice for a fan base and their star, but not for people who want to consume information or entertainment as content.
A good moderator can ensure a conversation works and serves the audience.
> Neither have to set up a podcast or "upload" their conversation.
That's the job of specialists. Like radio or podcast producers. Those also ensure that the audio is of usable quality.
There certainly is a room for adhoc conversations, both with famous people as well as within peer groups, though.
I think you're incorrect/dated about what you consider to be the modern medium for engagement with "long-form high-word-count content."
Beyond engaging with blog posts, or podcasts, or Twitch-style livestreams, the real #1 way people are consuming long-form content these days, is serialized — i.e. as "tweetstorms" or their AV equivalent in Instagram/TikTok. Pre-prepared, granularized "bites" of a long-form piece, that are pushed out one-at-a-time — and engaged with one-at-a-time between other things, as time permits, if you're consuming them "live" — but which also permit/encourage all-at-once consumption if you find them after-the-fact.
There is a reason people use Twitter for blogging, rather than "just having a blog." And that reason is that readers are able to concurrently engage with several ongoing text threads at once, if presented serialized in this manner, in a way that they would find harder to, if presented long-form, or impossible, if presented in a higher-engagement medium like voice or video.
And when readers are able to concurrently engage with several ongoing threads at once, they become willing to consume threads that, in a "consume all-at-once" medium, would never be able to "win" their full attention. Authors can settle for being the thing everyone is scheduling into their #2 or #3 or #5 attention-slot, rather than their #1 attention-slot, and still get engagement based on that.
You'd think, but look at the plethora of sports programming of people sitting in a studio talking about sports. Just talking. Very little clips of sports. Just talking. Then, they have the same kind of shows on fantasy sports. Some of these shows are double duty of a radio program, so it's people talking into a microphone so even less need for actual sports footage.
On the other hand both YouTube channels and podcasts have found a spoken audience. And YouTube is often just someone(s) talking (eg PBS Space Time) that could easily be a podcast.
I did not have a need for content to fill the gaps between a YouTube video, a podcast, and a phone call or group video chat. The exclusivity and talk of rampant racists [0] on the platform killed any interest I had in checking it out. I really don’t get what problem they think this solves for users.
Finding people that talk about stuff is one thing, finding people who like to listen to other people talking is the other. Unfortunately, listening has much higher friction than reading.