On the Clubhouse — we can do (much) better

1. Invite only — I know, I know… this is a century-old growth pattern, but just maybe it is high time to abandon it? At least when it is used with that goal and not due to technological/physical limitations. We are more and more focused on enabling people from minorities/around the world, for offering equal chances without looking into your past, connections, or position, and yet we admire the closed community of Clubhouse that is Silicon Valley iOS frat house. We can do better.
2. No persistence knowledge — I love when we are contributing to the greater good and for the future generations, take a look at Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap! So we can build on top and collaborate instead of reinventing the wheel. Clubhouse content is volatile, once listened by people being online on this meeting — it is gone. We can do better.
3. It is hard to search, skip through, or index — voice recordings are hard to visualize, pass data or even block offensive content. It is hard to work with and I hoped that we are already past times of dictating web addresses on the radio (apparently not), podcast footnotes are a step in the right direction, but a small one. We can do better.
4. “asynchronous communication is the key” — sincerely whole 2020/21. Even with that in mind Clubhouse requires you to be online at a particular moment to be able to listen to an interesting topic. Probably there is nothing better than planning your day around Clubhouse chats, often during work hours or in the night (for those not in the US). We can do better.
5. FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)- if you are not on the Clubhouse, and you are not online all the time — you are missing out on the best new social experience that everyone is talking about. Oh, and have you been live with Mark or Elon? No - your loss. We can do better.
6. Celebrities & influencers — on the Clubhouse 97%* of having a huge audience is having well-recognized celebrities and influencers on your show. It would be nice to promote those who have the knowledge and expertise over those who have public recognition. We can do better.
7. As many as we can (people on the stage) — as a result, the discussion is high level, jumping from topic to topic and mostly buzz words — having 10–15 people on the panel is “normal”. Inviting as many celebrities to make the event recognizable is turned up to 11 on the Clubhouse. We can do better.
8. Clickbaits (and influencers) are everywhere— with voice (point 3.) it is hard to filter out garbage content by just glancing at it. You have to invest much more time to just find out that there is nothing interesting there. That is why clickbait titles, influencers will strive in this environment. We can do better.

There are a ton of blog posts on the topic of why the Clubhouse is innovative and revolutionary and is/will be a new mass media format. It is brand new and probably there will be many iterations of this product (or copies by tech-giants). For sure it will have its niche, like celebrities meeting their audience with live Q&A and creating more engagement is a perfect use case (and Twitch/YT/FB can learn from that).

I really hope that some services (ex. FB/YT) will take a lesson on frictionless joining and collaborating together, as well I look forward to seeing how Clubhouse will build on top of audio content- in both cases, it will be very interesting. On the first front maybe small evolution like including Snapchat-like format inside Instagram and Messenger, on the second — monetization, way forward, addressing issues with toxic content, or even censorship requests from governments that don’t have a good way to moderate content there (case of blocking Clubhouse in China).

For now, we can do better than Clubhouse for creating content — often it is not that easy, flashy, or interesting but a “glorified radio app” is something that has too many flaws for me. When I look at all those events and panels hosted only on the Clubhouse I feel like we just made few steps back due to the hype and a very easy-to-use app. I would encourage you to create your content on podcast platforms or even YT/FB live if you are into Q&A, so it can be more accessible and help a lot more people.

*I made that number up