It isn’t often that a newco launches that fairly quickly captures unicorn-level attention the way that Clubhouse has. The audio-only social network, which has amassed 2M+ users and $100M in funding in just under a year after launch, seems to have raised the bar by lowering the barrier to participation, meaning, that in most rooms, anyone can raise their hand and, in most cases (depending on the moderator), participate in the discussion. It’s still in beta, so it’s currently iPhone only and invitation only: patience.

“If you could plug into a live conversation about a topic, you’re passionate about, on demand, anywhere in the world, and have an opportunity to not only listen to some of the smartest people on the subject, but also participate with them, would you?” asked Brian Solis in Forbes (The Latest Silicon Valley Unicorn, Clubhouse Raises $100 Million And Also Raises Attention To The Importance Of Audio-Based Social Networking). “…it represents an unquenchable thirst for meaningful community and engagement, especially in light of the chaos and devastation that played out in the forms of disinformation, political theater, and divisiveness across other social networks.”

But this piece isn’t simply about CH: it’s about the latest iteration of Social Media and the backlash we’re seeing. While Solis did wonder if CH would have gotten as popular as it did were lockdowns not so prevalent and had Zoom fatigue not set in, points taken, but it’s bigger than that. CH is an open forum (of course the usual trolls and marketers hawking their services are there: that’s the way of the world, so you always need to find out to whom you are speaking, even at a real-world event) and as we’ve said before, no one stays on top forever, especially when the platforms – including Facebook, Twitter, Google – become dictatorial in their policies and cases in point: we will remind you that Twitter, lost $3.5 billion and Facebook $47.6B after deplatforming a certain leader of the free world. People are clearly fleeing the platforms – or being booted from them, without recourse. As for Google, the company “Deleted Over 100,000 Negative Robinhood Reviews To Save Its One-Star Rating Amid GameStop Chaos.” Which may explain the growing popularity of the Brave browser and the reason for the soon to be released more widescale (and also blockchain-based) Presearch.

Actions have consequences, and so it goes with the tech cabal, whose seeming directive du jour is to maul the hands that feed them. The platforms may be free, but it’s still about eyeballs and data.

And almost most importantly, CH offers what the other socials don’t: a conversation. A discussion. A dialog.

Revenge of the Normals

It seems that the masses, or what H. L. Mencken referred to as the Great Unwashed and Om Malik the ‘normals,’ are striking back. As Malik noted “By now, you must have read (or at least heard) about the rebellion of normals against the Wall Street Hedge Funds. A collective of Redditers nearly took down one of the biggest hedge funds, Melvin Capital, by what amounted to a massive short squeeze…What we are witnessing this week is a civil war (or war of attrition) between a socially-linked and large class of small investors against a small and exclusive circle of Wall Street short-sellers, like Citron Research or Melvin Capital.

“The reason we are seeing (and will see) more of this kind of collective behavior is because that society is so hyper-connected that sentiment can become a cancer that metastasizes really fast — be it in stock markets or in politics,” Malik continues, even as James Suriowecki, a veteran writer on all things finance and markets, notes. “In an odd way, it’s a remarkable testament to the internet’s ability to facilitate collective action.”

It’s the sentiment of the masses that’s the cancer???

The GameStop debacle demonstrated precisely how and that the system is rigged, as does the censorship by the tech cartel, who will readily and without your having any recourse deplatform anyone whose views are not in lockstep with their own. And the sentiment of the masses is the cancer?

The WallStreetBets/Redditors’ actions and the rise of the new alt platforms have demonstrated that normals have clearly had enough.

And payback is always a bitch.

As for Robinhood, here’s a must-read: The Inside Story Of Robinhood’s Billionaire Founders, Option Kid Cowboys And The Wall Street Sharks That Feed On Them The perfect stock trading app for the videogame generation was supposed to “democratize finance” with zero-commission trades. But the primary plan was to get rich by selling customer trades to the market’s most notorious operators.

The GameStop Saga Isn’t About Finance, It’s Part Of The Ongoing War Between Elites And Populists, says The Federalist, and that’s only one corner of the universe. Twitter may launch Clubhouse competitor Spaces (it’s already out in beta), but it’s still Twitter and all of the baggage that comes with it, and why put in the effort if one – anyone – is at risk of being exiled or deplatformed, without recourse?

Enterprise Perseveres Through the Crisis, notes AIER. “Online retail has been the fastest-moving sector for small business creation, with ample opportunities in residential remodeling, education technology, and virtual health care (and social, it seems!) “…Github, Airbnb, Slack, Uber, WhatsApp, and Venmo were all founded during the Great Recession,” re after the dot com bubble burst, and both Zoom and Clubhouse may well be precursors of the potential Next Wave. Despite the fact that Zoom was around way before the lockdowns, post-lockdown, it quickly became the go-to platform; the masses did not opt for Google Meet, despite the fact that it’s sitting right there in the Gmail window. The tech cabal’s relentless intrusion into every aspect of our private lives seems to be giving rise to a new online backlash, which we might almost call a new TEA party, and we mean nothing political in this; it’s just that the acronym works: Tracked Enough Already.

We are aware that CH records the conversations that go on in the rooms, but so far, it seems that that’s as far as it goes. So far. And they do need to be careful with ‘right to be forgotten’ issues…

Bubble, Bubble?

The decline of Web 1.0 was when the bubble burst and the debate over whether or not we’re in another bubble has been rearing its head for years and, at this point, it may well be moot. With this latter Age of Social, it may be not so much whether or not the bubble will burst, but rather whether or not the users themselves, and those glorious and unstoppable entrepreneurs out there, will simply suck the wind out of the monopolistic tech leaders’ sails. Onward and forward.