This morning I was listening to the latest episode of Waveform. Marques and Andrew were discussing if Clubhouse is just a feature. In it they touched on how that feature was already being deployed by other companies with deeper pockets.
Clubhouse is really popular right now but a thorn in the side that led to its tremendous growth was the journalism that surrounded it. It appeared on all of the tech news sites I visit.
The problem with creating a new thing in the midst of Silicon Valley money is the race to be ubiquitous for a slice of the internet before your slice gets copied and integrated into already popular sites and apps.
Reporting on success early is great for new users because we can see whats popular and decide to use it or not. But I don’t think Clubhouse has had enough time to organically grow with as many users as possible before it was forced to jump in the ring and start swinging.
Almost as soon as it became news, Clubhouse’s main feature was already being copied and developed by big Silicon Valley companies LinkedIn, Discord, Facebook and Twitter. I would bet at least one of those companies have an app on your phone already. Companies with lots of cash to throw around and an already established connection to you through the app on the device you carry around every day.
Thinking back to Snapchat when that was huge to being slowly made obsolete by the introduction of Instagram stories and later Facebook stories. But Snapchat had a longer time than Clubhouse to grow so it was able to stay longer in the ring competing against it’s own feature.
This is an interesting problem because It’s sometimes better to hope it stays a secret and grow slowly. At least then you’ll have time to establish yourself while developing new features that your users love rather than trying to compete against a version of yourself before you’re ready. I’m enjoying watching this all unfold and it’ll be interesting to see what happens to Clubhouse throughout the year.
Clubhouse is really popular right now but a thorn in the side that led to its tremendous growth was the journalism that surrounded it. It appeared on all of the tech news sites I visit.
The problem with creating a new thing in the midst of Silicon Valley money is the race to be ubiquitous for a slice of the internet before your slice gets copied and integrated into already popular sites and apps.
Reporting on success early is great for new users because we can see whats popular and decide to use it or not. But I don’t think Clubhouse has had enough time to organically grow with as many users as possible before it was forced to jump in the ring and start swinging.
Almost as soon as it became news, Clubhouse’s main feature was already being copied and developed by big Silicon Valley companies LinkedIn, Discord, Facebook and Twitter. I would bet at least one of those companies have an app on your phone already. Companies with lots of cash to throw around and an already established connection to you through the app on the device you carry around every day.
Thinking back to Snapchat when that was huge to being slowly made obsolete by the introduction of Instagram stories and later Facebook stories. But Snapchat had a longer time than Clubhouse to grow so it was able to stay longer in the ring competing against it’s own feature.
This is an interesting problem because It’s sometimes better to hope it stays a secret and grow slowly. At least then you’ll have time to establish yourself while developing new features that your users love rather than trying to compete against a version of yourself before you’re ready. I’m enjoying watching this all unfold and it’ll be interesting to see what happens to Clubhouse throughout the year.