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.
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.
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.
Is it because the authorities are unaware of it and haven't blocked it, so there's a brief window where uncensored conversations can take place?
Something like that happened with Clubhouse in China: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/world/asia/china-clubhous...
I suspect it's a lot of small things and social network multiplicative effect
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