The lockdowns have certainly had a huge impact on the online world. First, Zoom mushroomed from out of nowhere, and when Zoom fatigue seemed to be setting in, there was Clubhouse, taking over the zeitgeist and becoming, as the Daily Caller noted (in Here’s What We Know About Clubhouse, The New App That’s Dominating Social Media), the fifth most popular social media app on the Apple store, trailing behind only Facebook, Messenger, Discord, and WhatsApp.

 

Not to be outdone, Facebook is launching several new audio-only features, including “Soundbites…and an audio-only version of Rooms (called Audio Rooms – think Clubhouse).” as The Sun reports.

 

Lest we’ve forgotten, last year Facebook launched CatchUp, that “makes it easier for friends and family in the U.S. to coordinate phone calls or set up group calls with up to 8 people,” as Techcrunch reported and it was, well, not long after Clubhouse launched. Seems even then Facebook saw the writing on the wall and was already scrambling to…catch up.

 

Even LinkedIn is making a Clubhouse clone, The Verge reports.  “Twitter’s Spaces feature is rolling out now, Spotify is making one, Mark Cuban has one, even Slack is getting in the game.”

 

So it would seem that suddenly, everyone’s talking. Literally! Some simply to be social. Some for advice or help. Some as a branding, marketing or sales tool. Some are simply listening. And yes, there are even those out there who simply seem to like hearing themselves talk. Make no mistake about it: there’s something for everyone.

Audio-only is definitely a game-changer. It’s a dialog, a conversation and, in a room of strangers, removes the pressure of being ‘on camera’ and feeling that one always needs to put one’s best face forward.

Speaking of which, many people are suddenly podcasting, too: good to help build the brand, they say, and as someone with a short attention span, we will warn you that most people have short attention spans, so note to self: you have to capture them in the first few minutes, or you’ve lost them forever. Another heads up: Unless you are broadcasting something very specific that requires a certain amount of time – 15, 20 or even 30 minutes or more, such as a meditation, an interview or, or say, an astrological forecast, and people who gravitate to those broadcasts are aware that they’ll take more than a few minutes to view – keep it short and to the point. Or divide it into multiple parts. Case in point and definitely worth a watch: This is Water by David Foster Wallace – his 2005 20 minute commencement speech at Kenyon College – broken up into two 10-minute segments.

 

People are working remotely and doing meetings online. Know how people hate long meetings? For the most part, they hate long podcasts, as well as people in rooms who drone on forever. Be mindful of that. People haven’t changed – only the platforms have.

 

Tell a story – and make it a good one, ending with a punchline or at least a memorable takeaway. And don’t forget your call to action, be it your contact information, website address or a reminder of when you’ll be doing your next broadcast and where.

 

While the audio-only (multi-user chat) is being hailed as something of a new medium, truth be told, it’s not. These platforms are merely latter-day iterations/a reimagining of something that was around in the nascent days of that once most audio-only of mediums – the telephone with, specifically, the party line.

 

According to att.com, “a party line was a shared landline connection among a number of homes in a neighborhood. There just weren’t enough telephone lines to go around. Says Mental Floss, “Party lines were very common in the first half of the 20th century, especially in rural areas and during the war years, when copper wire was in this short supply. A party line was a local telephone loop circuit that was shared by more than one subscriber. There was no privacy on a party line; if you were conversing with a friend, anyone on your party line could pick up their telephone and listen in.”

 

Not unlike the audio-only platforms, although you can choose the conversations, or topics, in which you’d like to participate. For now, at least, and definitely on Clubhouse, which has upset, for example, The New York Times, as we’ve previously reported, who were appalled that people could actually participate in unfettered (re uncensored) conversations. We’ll see if that’s also the case with the Twitter Spaces and Facebook Audio Rooms, two platforms notorious for deplatforming users and groups who do not conform with their somewhat biased/arbitrary standards. Everything comes full circle eventually, and once again, with the major players bringing forth their own copycat audio-only platforms, we’ll see if, as some predict, they’ll leave Clubhouse in the dust. We doubt it. As we said, people don’t change, which also holds true for the tech cabal and speaking of full circle, lest we forget, there again, it’s always about the party line. Onward and forward.