They have a vouching problem, which Richard Feynman described the dynamic well in honor socieites, where once you were on the inside, most of the effort went into figuring out how to attract the people you wanted and continue to signal your status, while keeping others out.
I've been invited into quite a few exclusive social networks (scenes, clubs, societies, networks, etc.) and they all have a similar dynamic. There is a core group annointed by someone legendary who doesn't really participate much, a senate of old guard who run things in the background, some quirky legacies who are tolerated but marginal, a few social queen bee types who gatekeep and police the tone, and then a lot of social butterflies who promote and attract people into the gateway funnel. It's the model of leader/essentials/influentials/interchangeables model.
What I'd speculate happened (or will) is they didn't have a good funnel because the top influentials were too high stakes, and it creates the incentive for arrivistes to knock the ladder away behind them, which tanks growth. Clubhouse doesn't have enough privacy to invite your friend who might attract tone police attention, and growth depends on being able to select from those very people in a funnel.
Basically, the path from outsider to interchangeable to the more socially secure influential level is too unstable, and strivers won't invite their off-brand friends.
Where I have seen other networks and scenes grow is you need a lobby that is attractive to people, and then once you are on the other side of it, you are securely inside, at least the first level. It requires a layer of real privacy and privilege, and even relative secrecy. Maybe Clubhouse secretly has that now, but it's perhaps too secret, as this article is about how their funnel into their pipeline is drying up.
I don't think that new arrivals knocking down the ladder is the problem at all.
This is not a 'club trying to remain too clubby'.
It's more or less a thing that had viral appeal due to slight clubbyness, and has not been able to attract major content creators. Podcasters are staying away because they can't get paid.
The remaining content just isn't very good, and without the ability to 'time lapse' like every other platform (YouTube, TikTok) it means we have to struggle through the 99% garbage to get to the 1% 'good stuff' whereas TT and YT algorithms take care of that for us.
If Elon Musk stayed on, or, they were able to consistently get key industry insiders with promoted talks, then it 'might work'.
In short, the product just isn't that great, and what was originally appealing isn't working at any kind of scale.
Given the amount of money they've raised, and that the writing has been on the wall for some time, I'm really finding it odd they haven't secured much more consistently better content.
At very least, have 'serious investors' and 'media industry insiders' with known time-slots.
This sounds crazy but literally get Oprah a show, were she has 'open and honest, live conversations'. None of us would like that but a billion people would. They'd have to pay her a fortune... but they're at that level. Remember when YouTube sponsored presidential debates? That.
> There is a core group annointed by someone legendary who doesn't really participate much, a senate of old guard who run things in the background, some quirky legacies who are tolerated but marginal, a few social queen bee types who gatekeep and police the tone, and then a lot of social butterflies who promote and attract people into the gateway funnel. It's the model of leader/essentials/influentials/interchangeables model.
I recently started a new role at a large Enterprise after having worked in startups for the past 10 years and have been annoyed by the culture in the company. What you describe seems to fit more or less my feelings about the business. There is the typical clique around the CEO of bonus collectors, they want to hire loads of people "to go faster" and do things "different" but at the same time people who have been there for a while (often a long time) want to keep people out so they can keep working in sleepy town and have business as usual. etc. A similar dynamic. Interesting.
I have thought, in my experience, that the c-suite would be smart enough and savvy enough to see this, and even be incentivized to do something about it, but...maybe not. It's kind of the water we swim in, after all. I recall once having the elevator door open as I was about to rush out, only to be blocked an entourage of peeps surrounding one of the founders about to step in...
Yes. And if the promotion possibilities are limited, every competitor you knock out, increases the chance for you to be promoted. On the c-level it's more about budgets, reorgs and getting ownership over more topics (power) - every competitor you make look bad will not get more budget, will not get new responsibilites, will not get the new department.
Many people at the top of large organizations got there by knocking out many others, the most political are able to rise to the top over time.
Luckily I came into c-level positions by startup growth, byouts and acquisitions, not by going through the ranks.
> that the c-suite would be smart enough and savvy enough to see this, and even be incentivized to do something about it
Some do better than others. But ultimately it’s the same behaviors in different packaging. Everyone is competing for face time with the chiefs. Everyone is trying to sound the smartest and most insightful. Everyone has to critique or ask for follow up action items; otherwise the meeting was a waste of time.
The chiefs like to be around people the relate with. Let’s bond on our shared interest in watches, sports, travels, homes, cars, etc. and it adds pressure to the rising class of veeps to like all of those things as well. After all, what else are you going to do with your bonus?
I think that's a combination of "I want to lose weight without really changing anything" and "We want to reward loyalty by tying promotions to tenure...until you're no longer useful and we can sack you at a moments notice in an unfortunate cost-reduction exercsie."
There's a lot of truth in this. Can you go deeper, what does: "they didn't have a good funnel because the top influentials were too high stakes, and it creates the incentive for arrivistes to knock the ladder away behind them,"
Thanks. If they stay too exclusive, they wilt. Social networks are basically gamefied social climbing, and so the strategies people employ are like teenagers trying to get invited to parties. To grow one, you need to give hope to everyone, opportunity to some, and access to few.
The (mimetic) distance of the valley billionaires and celebrities that clubhouse is famous for is too far from the Everyone, and that can create a negative feedback loop where normal people won't even try to join because there is no hope factor for them. Hence no funnel. The ones with opportunity to breathe that air are playing a pro game where they don't want to risk adding competitors or liabilities by inviting them.
To grow a platform, someone has to have a meta understanding of it and they can't just pretend it's cool for reasons nobody can understand because it just is. The users can't acknowledge this dynamic or even talk about the unspoken rules because the first rule is that that the rules are unspoken.
Growth doesn't come from getting a bunch of fancy people together, there just aren't enough of them to sustain anything, it comes from the bottom up. You need to extend the hope to a larger funnel so you can provide opportunities to some of them, and then select from the best candidates for access.
I'm curious if you're suggesting that the only way for a new social network to overcome the "cold start" problem is to restrict access along some strata at the right ratio to incentivize the largest audience at the bottom to join?
Do you think a social network that starts off as entirely "open" to everyone would be challenged due to lack of a "fomo" factor, or is a quality product with the right vision enough?
There needs to be a lobby. It can be an open lobby, but it's the funnel. A new social network isn't something you just create, it's the effect of something else.
So it's not about restricting access, as that assumes an imaginary level of demand. It's about leveraging a core group to attract a larger crowd who you then selectively elevate into an in-group, typically based on competence and personal investment of some kind.
A "product," isn't a technology, it's the thing that meets a need, and if you don't have that need, your technology is meaningless. The need must be concrete, as there is no magic ratio that will fool people, even if there are a few theoretical ratios about equillibrium changes in networks.
> So it's not about restricting access, as that assumes an imaginary level of demand. It's about leveraging a core group to attract a larger crowd who you then selectively elevate into an in-group, typically based on competence and personal investment of some kind.
That makes sense, so finding, attracting, and retaining a core group of early adopters is really key.
> We talked about how startups are a scene, and why designing a local innovation economy from scratch – even if you think you ‘have all the incentives correctly’ – never works. (from the article)
That's a really interesting observation, and I tend to agree, perhaps the antithesis of "build it and they will come"?
I think those networks are based on things are useful without the social network, the network itself isn't something they use on an on-going basis (for example, I doubt Ferrari owners gather everyday to increase DAU numbers on an app, probably more like bi-monthly track meets which is fun by itself).
Are either of those things social networks? (I don't know what it's like to be a Ferrari owner or a Centurion. I assume that status / privilege is a big part of it, but not necessarily in the form of rank in a network).
Really no. This isn’t about privilege, secrecy etc.
I invited a few people a couple of months back, and was a daily user for a short time.
Now I can’t find anything worth paying attention to so I am not visiting. I’m not going to bother inviting other people to something I don’t find useful.
It’s the same for everyone else I know who has used it.
I find that with most social networks.... normal people ruin it. When twitter was all tech people it was great. Once the normies came in they ruined it. Same with clubhouse. When paulG and other tech luminaries were chatting overnight it was magic. Now it's garbage fake rich people.
Gonna state the obvious: it seems like you two came there for different reasons: being entertained (you) / meeting up with acquaintances (parent). Like YouTube versus WhatsApp?
Compelling analysis. From reading meta-histories such as "Guns, Germs, and Steel" or "Sapiens", I get the impression that various organized religions exploited these same dynamics.
I always imagined that Karl Rove had a heavily marked-up copy of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" as he manipulated politics, paying particular attention to the sections on religion. This should also be required reading for anyone staking their livelihood on a social media startup.
I think any discussion of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" needs to come with the caveat that the author (Jared Diamond) is widely criticized by the greater historical/anthropological/poli-sci community for prioritizing narrative in his books over scientific accuracy.
"Guns" is still a good read, as long as you don't stop there.
Yes, "Guns" is wildly entertaining. Why we stopped at domesticating horses: Donkeys are only mildly irritable. If a Zebra bites you in the thigh your only option is to shoot it.
I sensed an intuitive truth to the instructions on manipulating people. And I sensed that Karl Rove was following this playbook. Whether it has scientific veracity, to my dismay it worked for him.
As for "Sapiens", I love how it's translated into so many languages. There's even an Audible version in Catalan. It's so much easier to learn a language when you know what the text is about to say.
This is quite the caveat. "Its a good book, except that all the testable claims made are false". Shouldn't that discredit the untestable "narrative" claims? Guns Germs and Steel is a Talmudic exercise in making stuff up to support the author's biases. Its only usefulness is as an example of how to make a superficially convincing case for something totally wrong.
That a degree of geographical determinism exists seems pretty clear.
What's far less clear is that it was a simple as agriculture rose first on the Hilly Flanks. Game over.
Why the West Rules for Now is IMO correct when it basically says "Of course, the various factors Diamond discussed played a role but they're not the whole story. The book then goes on to show (based on a lot of data) how the Western Core and the Eastern Core actually switched leadership positions back and forth over time. I think it's fair to characterize his position as it was always going to be one of those two, but the West achieve its position solely because it was first.
Why didn't Babylon industrialize? Or China or Egypt or Persia or India or Ethiopia or the Inca or the Greeks or Romans or Arabs or Nubians or Zulu or Mississippians or Ottomans or or or or or.
North-West Europeans did what we did because we chose to do the things necessary and others didn't. The only purpose of environmental determinism is to muddy the waters. If Africans had invented electricity and someone used specious arguments to belittle Africans by saying their accomplishment was nothing special because industrialization was inevitable in Africa because of how much rainfall they get you and I would recognize how racially motivated that is.
Actually, the universe is a closed thermodynamic system so the course of history and all decisions ever made by humans in the past and the future were completely determined by the initial energy density fluctuations of the big bang. It logically follows that we should let all criminals out of prison immediately because their crimes were purely an inevitable consequence of their environment. No one can be "guilty" of a crime he did not chose to commit. Likewise everyone should be given the same amount of wealth because the amount of studying and hard work you do is not a virtue deserving of reward, but an inevitability. Time is an illusion. Volition does not exist for one may recursively ask "why" until time collapses into a simple parameter of the function describing the state of the universe. The fact that we experience time at all is a fluke, an irrelevant mystery.
The classic so far seems to be C.R. Hallpike from an anthropological angle [0]
It’s 17 pages, but the general idea is basically ”whenever his facts are broadly correct they are not new, and whenever he tries to strike out on his own he often gets things wrong”.
And just in case anyone boxes & dismisses this as anthropology = social science = progressive relativist criticism, Hallpike is an 83 year old Oxford type who recently spent 200 pages [1] being very angry at popular modern ideas about the realities of primitive society.
I appreciate these links, thank you. I wish there could/would be a point by point response to the criticisms from Yuval, however. Humans have a predictable tendency to undermine each other, so it would be nice to easily see the counterpoints to the issues raised by other scholars who certainly have incentives to defend their life's investment in their biases, too.
As a scientist (not in anthropology), the feel of Sapiens was very unscientific. All assertions were made with minimum citation, and couched in "relevatory" language that always makes me feel that the author is hiding something.
If you want Sapiens but without these problems, try "Against the Grain" by James C. Scott. Covers much of the same material, but with many more citations from reputed journals and academics.
Like "Guns, Germs, and Steel", "Sapiens" spins a tale. True or not, I can see how these ideas could be dangerous in a mind like Carl Rove's. As a mathematician, I take ideas under consideration, to expand my imagination of what's possible. And as a would-be mountaineer, it has been explained to me how one needs to be able to tell six days of stories in case a snowstorm pins you inside your tent. These guys could clearly manage.
I'm considering "Against the Grain". The Audible narrator is an acquired taste (he hyper-articulates, and holds trailing vowels as if he's trying to establish his social class) but one can learn to tune this out.
I don't know about Rove, but Gingrich is famous for his love of the animal kingdom, and the fact that he views life and politics through that lens (a lens that is, imho, both very inaccurate, and a very obvious rationalization of the damage his life's work has caused, but nonetheless).
> and strivers won't invite their off-brand friends.
I haven't used it other than to listen to on initial thing, but when I was invited I thought it was basically like a Gmail invite. How does it reflect on the person who invited you in a meaningful way?
Vouching for someone to join Gmail is different than vouching for them to join a network a person has a significant social or professional stake in. In tech, we trade mostly (80:20) on competence, outside tech, people trade 80:20 on relationships and perceptions.
Since my upside doesn't come from those networks I can armchair QB it.
I'm just asking how so though? Does Clubhouse display a trail of who invited who publicly and also Clubhouse admins are actually going through and booting people that invited the "wrong" person (other than the normal stuff like that every site must do to remove networks of spam accounts/bots)?
No one "vouched" for you to join Gmail, the invite system was just a way of limiting the initial load or viral way of having people advertise it to each other depending on who is telling the story. I've never heard it as being to done to make sure the users were "vouched" for.
The bigger problem is that without exclusivity, it’s not compelling.
Outside of music, audio is always the loser mass media. Radio 1.0 atrophied when TV became affordable. The second generation of shock and right wing talk radio is eroding away to more extreme social media and hyper targeted podcasts. Where does clubhouse fit other than a more niche, locked down spin on a podcast.
Depends on whether their product is a cool social network or a voice bridge. Twitter and other text/image social networks scale because there was no opportunity cost to following someone, whereas participating in a conf is a time sink and reputation bid. The comments on this thread talk about how it's not fun, so some users are disengaging. Clubhouse's retention numbers wouldn't give the more meaningful info about DAU/MAU, which are about the engagement that necessarily drives the network growth.
Absolutely armchairing this, but stories about people in their target market winning the fame lottery or some other jackpot on it would drive that funnel. The way society pages used to do it was gossip columnists and blind items written by people who had skin in the game so they wouldn't upset the applecart. (Vice can't swing that because their whole schtick is sympathy for people who disgust themselves, so there's no desire there) Clubhouse doesn't have to reproduce that era of media, but they could learn some stuff from it.
I've been invited into quite a few exclusive social networks (scenes, clubs, societies, networks, etc.) and they all have a similar dynamic. There is a core group annointed by someone legendary who doesn't really participate much, a senate of old guard who run things in the background, some quirky legacies who are tolerated but marginal, a few social queen bee types who gatekeep and police the tone, and then a lot of social butterflies who promote and attract people into the gateway funnel. It's the model of leader/essentials/influentials/interchangeables model.
What I'd speculate happened (or will) is they didn't have a good funnel because the top influentials were too high stakes, and it creates the incentive for arrivistes to knock the ladder away behind them, which tanks growth. Clubhouse doesn't have enough privacy to invite your friend who might attract tone police attention, and growth depends on being able to select from those very people in a funnel.
Basically, the path from outsider to interchangeable to the more socially secure influential level is too unstable, and strivers won't invite their off-brand friends.
Where I have seen other networks and scenes grow is you need a lobby that is attractive to people, and then once you are on the other side of it, you are securely inside, at least the first level. It requires a layer of real privacy and privilege, and even relative secrecy. Maybe Clubhouse secretly has that now, but it's perhaps too secret, as this article is about how their funnel into their pipeline is drying up.