Morning! ā
Long email today and tonnes of cool topics in the pipeline.
A bit of a tech theme going on at the moment too, but I assure you things will be as sporadic as ever very soon.
Despite my own facination with following the tech world, I will hold off discussing anything unless I feel it has crossed into the releam of normal society and I think itās worth paying attention to, no matter who you are.
ps. thank you so much for your support those of you whoāve bought me coffees and even got yourselves some clothing š, that truly does not go unnoticed š
Anyway, Cāmere to meā¦
Interesting
Clubhouse šš¼
The new, invite-only social media platform
At the end of 2019, I wrote an email on the growth of TikTok, which had amassed a huge user base but completely unbeknownst to those in Ireland, and wellā¦ hindsight is 2020.
Thereās a new social network on the block, although itās tiny still and you canāt access yetā¦
Maybe this will be the next big thing, either way, it certainly seems like the idea of an audio-only platform could take off, just depends on who gets it right first.
Clubhouse is essentially like a live podcast combined with a panel discussion, itās being used for chats on all sorts of topics. You can meet like-minded people and develop ideas, it has a sort of networking vibe to it.
Back in May with just 1,500 users on the platform they already managed a $100M evaluation, so clearly people see the potential. Several Celebs were first to be invited on, including Oprah Winfrey, Kevin Hart and Drake.
Image: TechCrunch
The app features āroomsā where you can jump in and out of chats on different topics.
There is definitely an air of Houseparty to it the way you can hop into live chats, but also it seems a little like Zoom with peopleās mics on mute whilst others are in discussion, but again it is audio-only. Nothing is recorded and chats are not saved.
You can listen to any public room but you canāt contribute to a group unless you start it or youāve been invited to participate āon the stageā. Anyone can āput their hand upā to ask to contribute, but this feature can be turned off by group admins, for example, if the listening audience was very large it would be just unfeasible to allow input from thousands of people.
The bad news is that it is still in private beta, so you have to get invitedā¦
Once you get on the App you can invite one other person and then through using the app, hosting discussions etc, you can earn more precious invites!
In fact, when you invite someone to the app, your name appears at the bottom of their profile as the person who nominated them to join, almost in an accountability way?
Currently, itās only available on IOS, and if you go searching for it, itās not the productivity app with the purple branding, thatās an entirely different app.
āWhat an interesting personality looks like on Clubhouse is different than what it looks like on other platforms,ā Ms. Connors said. Several people in the pilot program are in their 40s or 50s.ā
Clubhouse has yet to set up a revenue/monetization platform and there are few analytics tools available to creators either.
āThe pressure for Clubhouse to crack the creator ecosystem is high. Failing to prioritize the needs of power users can drive them away. In 2015, nearly 20 of Vineās top 50 creators left the app after a meeting in which the company refused toĀ pay $1.2 million dollars to retain them. The app shut down a year later.ā
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āI feel like something has palpably shifted in the past year among investors, and it seems like everyone is talking about the creator economy now and investing in creator tools,ā said Li Jin, founder ofĀ Atelier, a V.C. firm investing in the influencer economy.
She pointed to TikTok as a platform that had defied the widely held notions among investors that āconsumer socialā ā platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram ā was a thing of the past. āTikTok accomplished that in large part by treating creators as first-class citizens and making them feel like theyāre served for and cared for,ā Ms. Jin said. āI think that made investors realize serving creators was a good business strategy.ā
(read more - New York Times)
Clubhouse is also having lots of issues with abuse on the platform and they have been slow to get policies and safeguards in place to manage it.
It will be interesting to see if it can scale, having a small user base, particularly those with credentials seems like a strength, one that can only deplete as the app grows.
It is not the only audio-only app currently trying to make a splash, with āSpaceā being another.
Quarantine
Hotel Training š¾
The Australian Open is due to start on the 8th of February but it is surrounded by some early controversy, which Iāll try to summarise really briefly.
Australians and politicians are angered that allowing foreign athletes in or giving them special treatment would undermine all of the countryās strict efforts to keep it free of the virus.
There is controversy amongst the many athletes who on arrival were locked into a strict 14-day hotel room quarantine, due to positive cases on their flights. Some claim that the rules were not made clear by officials and that they changed on arrival, with the initial perception being from some that they would have access to training facilities even if restricting their movements.
Others are happy to quarantine as necessary but are more worried about injury since they cannot prepare properly in just a tiny room before competing at the highest level in a Grand Slam. Also controversially, depending on where and how players arrived, they have been given different luxuries, with some of the top players having access to the hotel gym.
You can read more elsewhere but I actually wanted to share the positive videos being shared by athletes making the most of their situation, like this one.
(I wish videos could play natively in an email)
āSwitzerlandās Belinda Bencic, Uruguayās Pablo Cuevas, Kazakhstanās Yulia Putintseva and Britainās Heather Watson are among more than 100 players and staff now in hard lockdown in Melbourne, after four new positive cases linked to the tournament were revealed on Monday.
The quartet ā along with other players ā shared footage of themselves training inside their hotel rooms. Within these makeshift training centres, balls have been smashed into bed linen, volleys practised against high-rise windows and 5km run in tiny hallways.ā
(read more - The Guardian)
The Guardian put together a compilation video of the makeshift hotel training.
Saved š·
Think š
In the first Harry Potter the security for the philosopher's stone was so weak it was broken by eleven year old kids and yet these people still kept their jobs
Thatās all š¤š½
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