Clubhouse, which centralizes creation and consumption into a feedback loop, will do for audio what Twitter, Stories, and TikTok did for text, images, and video
To what extent are new companies, particularly those in new spaces, pushed versus pulled into existence? Last week I wrote about how Tesla is a Meme Company:
Clubhouse gains a clearer platform narrative: live audio is positioned as both the content format and the feedback mechanism that can pull listeners into becoming participants.
Twitter faces pressure to make Spaces a substantive social layer rather than a peripheral feature, because its existing text network gives it a direct distribution advantage.
Second-order effects
Creator-service firms such as Audio Collective and analytics products such as Direcon gain a reason to build around Clubhouse as organizers, brands, and hosts need help operating live programming.
Competition shifts from exclusive access to the quality of creator tools, discovery, and repeat participation, areas where Twitter can bundle audio into an existing network.
Third-order effects
The later move to asynchronous voice group chat suggests that audio-social products may need durable messaging behaviors, not only live-room novelty, to sustain a creator-and-listener loop.
If audio platforms continue to generate adjacent tooling and services, value will increasingly be divided among the host network, creator operators, and the software layer that measures and manages participation.
The trend: Social platforms are extending beyond publishing feeds toward formats that collapse creation, conversation, and audience feedback into a single participation loop.
really interesting hypothesis from @benthompson that makes the case for @joinClubhouse as the logical evolution of audio writing —> blogs —> Twitter photos —> Instagram —> IG Stories video —> YouTube —> TikTok audio —> podcasts —> Clubhouse https://stratechery.com/... https://twi…
Interesting @benthompson piece on clubhouse. He posits that if clubhouse and social audio take off, Spotify's investment in podcasts might look like betting on blogs in the 2000s, only for Twitter to come along and kill them https://stratechery.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Clubhouse's Inevitability Clubhouse will do for audio what Twitter, Instagram Stories, and TikTok did for text, images, and video. https://stratechery.com/...
We've seen this dynamic happen across other platforms: zero-cost publishing for content creation, aggregated massive audiences & nudges to assist distribution. But then comes the next phase: curation. And this is where IMO Clubhouse is going to have to work to avoid past mistakes
But an interesting new development is that creators no longer have false consciousness toward aggregators like Facebook. They can see that aggregators promise reach, but commodify creators. We see them evolving new strategies to hack around this.
Curation is how the platforms suggest, promote, or push users things they are likely to want to see (or in this case, listen to). The discovery process can be proactive - users search and the platform returns ranked results - or somewhat passive, via pushes. It's powerful.
I usually end up agreeing with Ben on most things but I don't think CH is going to transform podcasts. They will just introduce a more viable “live” podcast (think live radio vs recorded radio) and lower bar for creation in general https://twitter.com/...
An astounding long read on all things social really. But also so much more. A one-stop social history plus an eye on the future. Clubhouse's Inevitability https://stratechery.com/...
Goodread by @benthompson on how Clubhouse fits into the democratization trend that has reshaped content distribution for numerous content types over the last 15 years. (SIO got a shout-out for our work this wk on the Agora relationship...link in tweet 2) https://stratechery.com/.…
RSS died for text use-cases because it was outcompeted by Facebook. RSS for audio (podcasts) competed against non-consumption, and thrived. But the money has made podcasting legible to aggregators. Spotify, Clubhouse smell blood in the water. https://twitter.com/...
Podcasts are one of the last online mediums for truly indie content that doesn't live in a walled garden, so of course VC money wants to ruin it. https://twitter.com/...
So, powerful (and enjoyable!) new platform with large and growing userbase will now confront many of the same challenges that other social platforms have struggled with.
As Twitter killed blogging by being lower friction and fixing discovery, Clubhouse could do the same for podcasts. Key question is if Clubhouse can build out interest graph & discovery faster than Twitter can scale their Spaces product. Who do you bet on? https://stratechery.com/…
I've been trying to put my finger on the Clubhouse phenomenon for weeks now but @benthompson nailed it in his analysis. Analogy w Stories/Video is apt “combined the customized nature of the feed with the ephemerality inherent in digital's abundance” https://stratechery.com/...
This is a great analysis. I wonder, though, whether we ought to be thinking of #Clubhouse as an evolution of #talkradio rather than of #podcasting https://twitter.com/...
Another way to look at this: Yet another moment where a platform will make loads of money off the efforts of individual content creators https://twitter.com/...
.@benthompson nails it: “Difference btwn Clubhouse & podcasts is how much dramatically easier it is to both create a conversation & to listen to one..inline with shift from blogging to Twitter, from website publishing to Instagram, from YouTube to TikTok” https://stratechery.com/…
Key @benthompson insight- 3rd wave “social” apps (twitter, tiktok, instagram) democratize creation dramatically + steer the creator/audience to what's Interesting Clubhouse is doing that to podcasts (though the algo part is 🤷) Clubhouse's Inevitability https://stratechery.com/...
“Stanford Internet Observatory has determined that a user's unique Clubhouse ID number and chatroom ID are transmitted in plaintext, and Agora would likely have access to users' raw audio, potentially providing access to the Chinese government.” https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/ ..…