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I was a “speaker” in a Clubhouse room last night, but never did get a chance to speak.
That’s ok, and honestly probably for the best! The experience from the speaker side revealed some interesting aspects of this emerging social network.
That’s ok, and honestly probably for the best! The experience from the speaker side revealed some interesting aspects of this emerging social network.
The format is essentially a race to speak at the earliest opportunity. Kind of like hitting the buzzer on Family Feud. But the “winner” is not the first to hit the buzzer, it’s the one with enough chutzpah to keep talking while others are talking, until the others go silent.
Putting on my sound engineer hat, it was immediately obvious that within the chutzpah contest, those with a strong connection and good sound quality had a distinct advantage. There were a couple people who sounded near-broadcast quality and had no trouble “winning”
While that kind of sucks, one thing that is cool is actual speaking volume doesn’t matter. Due to signal strength and individual device choices, there were quiet talkers who were much louder than loud talkers.
Also the frequency range of your voice has an impact. Cell phones roll off low frequencies so higher pitched voices tend to cut through a bit easier, and can be more easily heard and understood in a mix of speakers talking at once.
Both of these factors are encouraging for people who might otherwise struggle to be heard. Still the strongest bias is towards assertiveness, essentially the same dynamic we see on cable TV news shows. Not necessarily the optimal path for thoughtful discussion.
Another flaw: speakers who can speak continuously without break can effectively hijack a room. The room I was in had a speaker who went way off-topic. It was a long time before a moderator felt comfortable interjecting, eventually removing them from the speaker list.
But overall there is a lot of promise. This new medium could bring new voices and talents to attention. A few room format ideas I’d like to see:
- Round robin: every speaker gets up to x minutes uninterrupted
- Matchups: same as above but with two speakers
- Round robin: every speaker gets up to x minutes uninterrupted
- Matchups: same as above but with two speakers
Finally, it was interesting that there was so little input allowed from listeners. Other speakers seemed to hack a way to signal agreement by flickering their mute buttons. Would be fun to have more participatory input like a clap/boo button, with live results.
