I really wanted this back then when it felt like I was missing out. Then twitter released their version and I got a taste and decided I wasn't into it after all.
Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks
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Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks
#32This is one of those interesting instances in which big tech copying a new startup has actually worked. The problem they had was most rooms were advertised on twitter. Now the Twitter Spaces integration means it's a one click for the organiser to set up and advertise a room to their twitter user base. It's very smooth for the user as well - one click, no separate app.
Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks
#33This is one of those interesting instances in which big tech copying a new startup has actually worked. The problem they had was most rooms were advertised on twitter. Now the Twitter Spaces integration means it's a one click for the organiser to set up and advertise a room to their twitter user base. It's very smooth for the user as well - one click, no separate app.
Clubhouse's feature was ted talks, which quickly turned into ponzi scheme talks. I don't think they had a chance, and it feels like the Clubhouse hype died down about a month before Twitter made a wide release for Spaces.
Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks
#34Thought this was about the SDLC app not the chat app.
Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks
#35I'm very curious if there were any reasons or design decisions on why Clubhouse didn't go for React Native from the start? Would it be fair to say they could have gotten to market quicker had they went with RN? Would love someone from the team to elaborate on this as Agora also has RN SDK's as well as Firebase.
[I'm on the clubhouse team, but was not involved in this decision]
1) the CH iOS app itself has a long history of powering other prototypes / small communities before CH existed — so I think the early engineers were leveraging what they had already, vs starting out from zero. (I think this is why they were able to find fit with CH - ability to move fast and try different things.)
2) I built an app with RN at a previous company and it was a reasonable experience, but custom UI / transitions / etc was pretty much out the window. I don't think it's an obvious choice by any means to go with RN, especially for a media-heavy app. Also, expanding that particular RN app I had built to Android was no easy task — the UI mostly "just worked" when we built the Android container, but many of our third party libraries didn't work at all on Android, and managing app navigation was a huge hassle between the two platforms. We ended up shelving the android effort altogether and shut the whole project down a bit later. :)
Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks
#36Don't get hung up on the "Clubhouse" part of the headline. This is a good, albeit somewhat sparse, article about building an Android app on a rushed timeframe. It's amazing to see how quickly a production-grade app can be produced by a team that arrives with the knowledge and experience for connecting the right frameworks and apps together. However, my experience matches the author's in that the hardest work often is…
> I don't think the lack of Android app is what caused their popularity to decline over time. They obviously made the right choice by launching what they could (an iOS app) as quickly as possible to seize the moment. Even though the popularity has declined, they now have a large war chest to figure out where to go next.
On the contrary, it was a beyond stupid to launch only on iPhone. I'm not sure if it was elitism or merely being poor at arithmetic, but it made no sense whatsoever.
Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
they had lots of funding though.... A 10mil round in June-July 2020, that's more than 14 months ago. Plenty of time to get a decent base feature android app. Also, they haven't added any features to the iOS app, and their voice quality in the height of it was really lacking (low qual. and lots of hickups), and there were room limitations, etc.... Anyway, it is remarkable what they achieved, as most of us (or our proj…
10mil, yes, but a lot of it probably went into the infra, bandwidth, and marketing (getting famous people and influencers into the rooms)
Also, $10M is really very little money to build an entire big business that everyone knows about out if. Large companies will spend more than that on a single advertising campaign without blinking.
Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks
#38Don't get hung up on the "Clubhouse" part of the headline. This is a good, albeit somewhat sparse, article about building an Android app on a rushed timeframe. It's amazing to see how quickly a production-grade app can be produced by a team that arrives with the knowledge and experience for connecting the right frameworks and apps together. However, my experience matches the author's in that the hardest work often is…
> I don't think the lack of Android app is what caused their popularity to decline over time. They obviously made the right choice by launching what they could (an iOS app) as quickly as possible to seize the moment. Even though the popularity has declined, they now have a large war chest to figure out where to go next. On the contrary, it was a beyond stupid to launch only on iPhone. I'm not sure if it was elitism o…
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Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks
#39Don't get hung up on the "Clubhouse" part of the headline. This is a good, albeit somewhat sparse, article about building an Android app on a rushed timeframe. It's amazing to see how quickly a production-grade app can be produced by a team that arrives with the knowledge and experience for connecting the right frameworks and apps together. However, my experience matches the author's in that the hardest work often is…
> I don't think the lack of Android app is what caused their popularity to decline over time. They obviously made the right choice by launching what they could (an iOS app) as quickly as possible to seize the moment. Even though the popularity has declined, they now have a large war chest to figure out where to go next. On the contrary, it was a beyond stupid to launch only on iPhone. I'm not sure if it was elitism o…
As a former consultant at a company that built many mobile apps, I think that was the norm. Picking either platform and trying to get some traction both focuses your dollars and developer talent on one decent thing that you can iterate ~2x as quickly on (while the app and business are very small) until you figure what you actually want to build. I think this actually applies to many things. I've seen people pick Android or iPhone apps first based on target demographic, and you might guess wrong, but usually businesses have a decent guess who their target customers are, and it doesn't seem foolish to focus on a small set of customers first.
Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks
#40Almost all the comments on this post seem incredibly negative and snarky comments like “wow they still exist”. Please consider that they are a small team, have gone under what can only be considered a monumental explosive growth, and given circumstances, shipping an app from scratch in less than 2.5months can be considered pretty good.
The technical problems being solved are certainly interesting.
But the snark that I have, is less directed at the clubhouse team, than it is against the cult-like users of clubhouse that I would run into or argue with, X number of months ago, that were clearly taking an app way too seriously.
If you live by the Hype, then you will die by it.
Maybe clubhouse will turn into something interesting eventually.
But it is clear, that all of those influencers and users, who were making out clubhouse to be some world changing app, that will revolutionize social dynamics, were wrong.