Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Launches Podcast and Live Audio Room Services

theouterhaven.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 55 posts

Re: Facebook Launches Podcast and Live Audio Room Services

#31

Post by reaperducer »

b3kart wrote: post #16
croes wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big players can only copy or buy up.

> only That’s a bold statement.

On the surface it is. But I think if you pause and look closely at the state a lot of the big tech firms these days, they're not run by visionaries and innovators any longer. They're run by C-levels trying to appease stockholders, and middle managers trying to appease the C-levels. That's why startups continue to thrive and occasionally outflank the incumbents.

There are very few visionary people left in tech these days. Most have died, retired, or gone on to other things.

I'd like to see a list of people that HN people think are currently "visionary." I have a few in mind, but I'd like to see what other people think, because I'm sure I've missed a few.

Re: Facebook Launches Podcast and Live Audio Room Services

#32

Post by jonwinstanley »

emilsedgh wrote: post #20
xibalba wrote: post #15

This whole format is a dead end. Clubhouse user growth and engagement is stalled out (and likely in decline). Not that Facebook minds. The millions spent cloning Clubhouse are a rounding error on their financial statements.

Clubhouse has been amazing though. I hope it can sustain. Discussions on it are much, much better than Twitter nonsense.

Interesting that you like it, personally I couldn't seem to find the "good" content. There are always a huge number of chats going on and it feels impossible to figure out which ones are the interesting ones. Also, after following a few people the number of notifications was so high I had to turn them off. But without notifications how can you know what is going on?

Re: Facebook Launches Podcast and Live Audio Room Services

#33

Post by reaperducer »

eric4smith wrote: post #5

Hard pass. The way how they messed up their video offering is a damned shame. Plus... why would i want to put my stuff into Facebook's stratospheric walled garden, where if I need to pull it back out later on, its almost impossible???

where if I need to pull it back out later on, its almost impossible???

Or, in my wife's case, actually impossible.

She's tried repeatedly for almost a year to download "her" data from Facebook. All she gets is a 4GB zip file that when uncompressed has a bunch of mostly empty folders and a 3.5GB "facebook_754893.zip.enc" file. By the filename, I guess it's an encrypted zip file, but nothing will open it. Searching the interwebs shows lots of people with the same problem, but no solutions.

If she was in the EU, she'd raise a stink. But being American, she's S.O.L.

Re: Facebook Launches Podcast and Live Audio Room Services

#35

Post by reaperducer »

leokennis wrote: post #9

So…the Clubhouse hype has passed and now there’s an alternative from the worst company in the world? Yeah…that’ll work well.

It doesn't have to work well. It only has to work good enough to damage the existing competition, and scare newcomers from even trying.

Re: Facebook Launches Podcast and Live Audio Room Services

#36

Post by luckydata »

reaperducer wrote: post #31
b3kart wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only That’s a bold statement.

On the surface it is. But I think if you pause and look closely at the state a lot of the big tech firms these days, they're not run by visionaries and innovators any longer. They're run by C-levels trying to appease stockholders, and middle managers trying to appease the C-levels. That's why startups continue to thrive and occasionally outflank the incumbents. There are very few visionary people left in tech these d…

In Facebook's case, they are being run by nobody. Never witnessed a more haphazard, disorganized company before working there. Truly frustrating place to work at, ruled by people with no vision and managed through a Kafkaesque system designed to create conflicting incentives for teams supposed to collaborate. I don't miss it at all.

Re: Facebook Launches Podcast and Live Audio Room Services

#37

Post by rvz »

xibalba wrote: post #15

This whole format is a dead end. Clubhouse user growth and engagement is stalled out (and likely in decline). Not that Facebook minds. The millions spent cloning Clubhouse are a rounding error on their financial statements.

Indeed it is a dead end. It is a mere 'feature request' to many of the existing popular apps out there rather than a separate full blown app.

The pandemic was Clubhouse's selling point and it has been copied to death by its competitors. Now that it is nearly over, there really isn't any point in going back or waiting for an invite when everyone else has the same feature on the old platforms.

I guess Phase 3 is when we start to see ByteDance creating their own Clubhouse clone and other smaller companies will be selling an SDK for others to rapidly create their own Clubhouse rooms.

At the end of this experiment, it will result in Clubhouse shutting down and giving back the money they raised from the VCs. Isn't that right Secret Inc.?

Re: Facebook Launches Podcast and Live Audio Room Services

#38

Post by xibalba »

antiterra wrote: post #29
xibalba wrote: post #15

This whole format is a dead end. Clubhouse user growth and engagement is stalled out (and likely in decline). Not that Facebook minds. The millions spent cloning Clubhouse are a rounding error on their financial statements.

Clubhouse is still invite-only, so that’s an artificial cap on growth. They still have the one-shot option of opening up to anyone and getting a huge bump of use and users, maybe right before another round or IPO.

Clubhouse 2021 installs[1]:

Feb - 9.6 million

Mar - 2.7 million

Apr - 922 thousand

Invites do not appear to be the growth bottleneck. With the Android app having been released in mid-May, installs will shoot back up for a time, but it sure looks like the actual TAM for Clubhouse is quite a bit smaller than its investors thought (given its crazy valuation).

Clubhouse is the app version of "this meeting could have been an email", but replace "meeting" with "live audio" and "email" with "podcast". This app/format is and always was the perfect trap for the VC/product manager class.

[1] https://archive.is/qQOVT

Re: Facebook Launches Podcast and Live Audio Room Services

#39

Post by nowherebeen »

echelon wrote: post #22
afavour wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook... and Spotify, and Twitter. They've all got Clubhouse clones going now. Sometimes I find the state of 'innovation' in large tech companies a little depressing...

It's hard to grow as a social media startup now. If you're successful, Zuckerberg and the rest will spend tens of millions cloning you. Only a select few reach escape velocity. Snapchat, TikTok. How do you survive without being trampled by the giants?

You can't. They can spend 200 engineers to study everything about your product and clone it. And it won't even make a dent in their revenue.

Re: Facebook Launches Podcast and Live Audio Room Services

#40

Post by telesilla »

reaperducer wrote: post #33
eric4smith wrote: post #5

Hard pass. The way how they messed up their video offering is a damned shame. Plus... why would i want to put my stuff into Facebook's stratospheric walled garden, where if I need to pull it back out later on, its almost impossible???

where if I need to pull it back out later on, its almost impossible??? Or, in my wife's case, actually impossible. She's tried repeatedly for almost a year to download "her" data from Facebook. All she gets is a 4GB zip file that when uncompressed has a bunch of mostly empty folders and a 3.5GB "facebook_754893.zip.enc" file. By the filename, I guess it's an encrypted zip file, but nothing will open it. Searching the…

Do we need a volunteer service where Europeans can take over ownership of an account and shut it down / export data?
Post reply on HN