Clubhouse bores me, and it will (probably) be wildly successful
Buy the rumor, sell the news
There’s something very peculiar about people, which is that we often generalize from our personal experience. We assume that personal experiences prove universal truths. But, bar tiredness and hunger, there are very few universal human experiences. Even sexual desire is not universally shared. So it’s very strange when I see people argue on Twitter that Clubhouse will fail because they deleted the app from their phone.
Look, I get it. I, too, find Clubhouse to be pretty boring. I don’t use it very frequently, and if everyone were as disinterested in it as me, it would quickly fail. But here’s the thing. There are seven billion people on Earth, and for some portion of those seven billion, “social audio,” or whatever we’re calling it these days, is intriguing, stimulative, interesting, etc.
Don’t infer generalities from personal experiences. Especially when you’re discussing whether a particular business is a viable one. Your personal preferences bear little relevance to the preferences of the market as a whole. I don’t follow American football, but I’d be crazy to conclude on the basis of my disinterest that it was doomed to fail.
Of course, there is an argument to be made about why Clubhouse will fail, and it’s worth reading through:
But, there were also cogent arguments made about why Amazon would fail or why Facebook would fail. But companies that can exploit network effects can find ways to monetize their audience. And it’s probably the same with Clubhouse: it has acquired a massive audience.
And that’s the key: it doesn’t matter if you removed Clubhouse from your phone. It doesn’t matter if all of your friends also removed it from their phones. Millions of people have installed the app. That’s a pretty large user base over which to generate revenues! Your personal experience is quite literally irrelevant to Clubhouse’s chances of success.