tl;dr; Meh.
Part of that is on me. I hadn’t paid much attention due to the whole secret society, invite only non-sense. As more people started to get in and it seemed like getting an invite wouldn’t be hard, I jumped in. A friend invited me a day later.
I saw the name of the app. “clubhouse drop in audio chat” it didn’t register in my head.
Then I got in. Oh… Audio….
I don’t dig it. I don’t see why it’s any different from apps that have been out a while and were voice based (I forget the name of the more popular one).
I fired it up and went through the on-boarding steps, helping dial in people I’d like to hear. It was amazingly VC heavy, blech. But I found 50 odd folks to follow, many pre-selected as “I might like”
The team behind the app do town halls, then do town hall reaction chat. Smart. I tuned into a reaction chat. It was not bad, very orderly every spoke one at a time, etc. I could see a little outline of who was talking, etc.
But, it was all I could do. Facebook, twitter, etc while demanding my attention, don’t require it. Clubhouse does. To actually participate, you have to be listening.
Jump ahead a week.
Ok, now I’ve played with it more and still don’t get it. For one thing, it seems to be lots, I mean LOTS of “get rich quick” business charlatans talking to each other about their shitty businesses and encouraging others, etc. Yay?
Clubhouse, uninstalled. It’s not a replacement for anything, and it demands your undivided attention, which is great for it, but horrible for the user.