Audio’s high bar

Clubhouse! Everyone in tech has an opinion about Clubhouse.

My opinion: In its current itteration like it, but don’t love it, and every tech person whose opinion I respect thinks it is the future of communication.

Techmeme produced a bonus episode on the bull case and the bear case for Clubhouse. This statement from Ed Zitron, though noted in the bull case, for me is the short-term bear case:

“The baseline to participate is very low. The baseline to do something that is actually worth listening to is quite high.”

This ‘high bar’ is even more true in 2021 due to the mass adoption of podcasts, whose production quality only continues to improve.

People are short on time and even shorter on patience. They don’t want to sit through “Ums” and “Uhs” or a bloviating Clubhouse presenter when a well-edited podcast or audiobook is an app tap away.