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Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks

blog.clubhouse.com

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Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks

#71

Post by Kosirich »

stale2002 wrote: post #40
stingraycharles wrote: post #10

Almost 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 c…

How much VC hype was due to sincere wish to promote something they believed and found use for and how much of it was shilling something that they have invested in. I'm not that active on Twitter, but for a while it was like a gospel "Clubhouse is the future"

Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks

#72

Post by jamil7 »

colesantiago wrote: post #28

I'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 think the founders were just familiar with iOS development so that's what they built it in. My perspective is that RN is a risk and a tradeoff like any other, there are quite a lot of pain points of RN which make it less attractive than it initially seems upfront. If your product is highly dependent on mobile it's better to go native for maximum flexibility, capability and to remove one extra party that you need to depend on. I also feel like mobile teams tend to naturally divide between platforms at a certain size and if you're already at that point you may as well use the native frameworks.

Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks

#73

Post by void_mint »

tomComb wrote: post #29
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #16

Don'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…

Given how long it took them to begin the process of creating an Android app one has to wonder whether they were after some sort of exclusivity.

> whether they were after some sort of exclusivity.

The only thing the company ever had was (fake, forced, paid) exclusivity. Once that went away people stopped caring (except those that were/are paid to be there, of course).

Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks

#74

Post by [deleted] »

markdown wrote: post #36
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #16

Don'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…

[deleted]

Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks

#75

Post by void_mint »

echelon wrote: post #64
Infinitesimus wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is of course, a feedback cycle here. If you always default to launching on iOS, don't be surprised if user adoption is further limited when you eventually get around to launching on Android since by then, there would be competing products or you'll have difficulty changing the perception of "this company thinks I'm a 2nd class citizen, why would I bother?" (Snap faced some of this for a while though I'm not sur…

Every time I see an app that seems novel or popular that is iOS only, I form a prejudice against it. I've never, as far as I can recall, gone back to Android offerings once they were eventually launched. Apps are cancer. Apple is the company responsible for this mess.

It's good for Apple and iOS users that your opinion is mostly irrelevant in this space.

Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks

#76

Post by dpritchett »

Kosirich wrote: post #71
stale2002 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

How much VC hype was due to sincere wish to promote something they believed and found use for and how much of it was shilling something that they have invested in. I'm not that active on Twitter, but for a while it was like a gospel "Clubhouse is the future"

I had to mute the word clubhouse on Twitter to keep from getting too cranky about it.

Avoiding VCs and accounts in their orbit helped as well.

Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks

#77

Post by Cederfjard »

capableweb wrote: post #70
dt3ft wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried it a while ago, the content was mostly people selling either themselves or their merchandise (books, courses, schemes). My sample was not just one try, I gave it a whole week. Same faces, same sale schemes. Uninstalled, figured it wasn't for me.

I think the same is true for all social media. When you initially join, one of two things happen: 1) you find a small niche group of people who are nice and you have something in common with, the platform quickly finds its place in your mind and "Most visited" section of about:newtab OR 2) you get faced with the most generic, get-rich-quick ads/posts/rants and quickly get a sour taste for the entire platform. Probabl…

Whereas for my wife, Clubhouse is in the former category. It’s interesting to see the juxtaposition between the bashing in tech circles like HN, and the use she gets out of it.

Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks

#78

Post by Cederfjard »

markdown wrote: post #59
gleenn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Andr…

I agree that that makes sense for most types of apps. Clubhouse isn't one of those cases. In my country, influencers who had iPhones picked it up, and then promptly dropped it because most of their followers couldn't come to the party.

Well sorry to be blunt, but were they that interested in your country as a market to begin with? It makes more sense to focus on iOS if you mainly target the US, where iPhone has a very large market share.

Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks

#79

Post by ackbar03 »

bloodyplonker22 wrote: post #58

I had a VC friend who switched to an iPhone, from Android, because of FOMO on Clubhouse. Now, after he realized that Clubhouse has naturally degenerated into a bunch of random people spouting off, with only a few rare pockets of quality content, he won't admit he switched to iPhone because of Clubhouse.

This has to rank near the top of the most vain thing I've ever heard before. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Shipping Clubhouse on Android in ten weeks

#80

Post by rvz »

raina_rain wrote: post #27
jimmySixDOF wrote: post #22

Title could have been "Shipping Clubhouse on Android in 10 Weeks 6 months late"

Don't know why this is downvoted. It was late. Had they released it sooner maybe the app could've caught a second viral wave

Exactly. It was more than 6 months late not '10 Weeks'.

The users do not care if it is native or not. As long as it exists on their platform of choice, they will use it.

The fact that it was not on Android in the first place, then being copied by the existing competitors and lockdowns lifting is the reason why the hype fizzled quickly and by the time they finished the Android app, it was already too late.

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