9 reasons why Twitter Spaces beats Clubhouse

Clubhouse is the "next big thing." Except it isn't. Twitter Spaces is the next big thing and I'll tell you why.

Clubhouse is the "next big thing," we're told by the headlines. Ever since Elon Musk appeared on Clubhouse last month, thousands of media outlets have all written the same story — Clubhouse is the next social network bla bla bla. 

What the stories miss is that Clubhouse is merely the first social audio app and service to get any traction. The next big thing is social audio, not Clubhouse specifically.

Clubhouse’s "secret sauce" is no secret at all — just a list of commoditizeable features. And, in fact, those features are being commoditized as we speak. Dozens of other apps are arising with similar features. But most importantly, both Facebook and Twitter are working on services with what are essentially the same core features. 

Twitter's service is called Spaces, and it's emerging slowly out of beta. I've spent some time on both Clubhouse and Spaces, and I'm ready to declare a winner. 

Clubhouse has more prominent users than Spaces. Clubhouse is way ahead on technology and the maturity of its app and feature set than Spaces. And Clubhouse is far more associated with social audio than Twitter.

And the winner is: Twitter Spaces!

Wait, what? 

That's right. The service that barely exists will clobber the leader, Clubhouse. Here are the 9 reasons why Twitter Spaces beats Clubhouse: 

1. Clubhouse is actually way behind Twitter on the part that cannot be commoditized: Community. When someone launches a room on Clubhouse, their followers are alerted, as well as others who have notified Clubhouse of their interest in the topic to be discussed. But just wait until, say, Elon Musk launches a Twitter Spaces conversation. His 47 million followers will be notified. Musk’s personally has 23 times more users than Clubhouse has. Twitter probably has more users with over 10,000 followers than Clubhouse has users with any number of users. It's not an issue this year, when the size of rooms are capped. But in future we can expect these to grow and even for caps to be eliminated. When rooms can be any size, Clubhouse will have little chance of keeping up with Twitter engagement. Clubhouse has 2 million users. Twitter has 330 million monthly active users and 145 million daily active users. Elon Musk appeared on Clubhouse once. But Musk is on Twitter almost every day. 

2. Twitter is the perfect notification engine for social audio. Spaces users can promote their chats on Twitter before they take place, and during — as many times as they want. Both the conversations and the promotion all takes place inside the same basic Twitter app. 

3. When all Clubhouse features are commoditized and ubiquitous, the leading platform will be determined by other factors. Right now, Clubhouse works better than Spaces. But that will change. Twitter will add features and improve functionality and performance. And within a year or so, all the social audio apps will work great and every social audio service will have the same core features. Clubhouse has no advantages in a world where every social audio space does the same thing. 

4. You don't know who people are on Clubhouse. Someday Clubhouse may find a way to verify prominent users. But for now, they have no way to do it. Brad Pitt Tuesday appeared on Clubhouse to talk about climate change. Except it wasn't Brad Pitt. It was Jacob Tran, who grabbed the @bradpitt username. Tran told interviewers than even before his own Room, he joined other rooms and noticed that tons of people joined because they thought Brad Pitt had joined.

   Uncle Jacob @jumpseut

   I started a room on clubhouse with the username @bradpitt

   Clubhouse is a dream service right now for criminals, trolls, propagandists and spies because nobody knows who anybody is. One of Clubhouse's most prominent users is someone who claims to be Luiza Rozova, Putin’s 17-year-old daughter, who is able to attract hundreds of Russian journalists to her rooms where she spreads all kinds of bonkers conspiracy theories. And while people can join and use Twitter anonymously, the prominent users are well known to be the real deal. Famous and notable people will use Twitter, and users will have confidence that they're engaging with the real people. 

5. Android users are bitter and resentful about Clubhouse. The Clubhouse app has existed on the iOS platform exclusively for the eight months since launch. The more the hype builds, the more resentful Android users become about being locked out of what the press calls the "next big thing" in social networking. Nobody knows when Clubhouse will ship an Android app. All we know is that in late January, Clubhouse said that they're "thrilled to begin work on our Android app soon." In other words, as of a month ago, they hadn't even started working on an Android app. Meanwhile, Twitter has promised Android support for Spaces next month. It looks like Twitter will beat Clubhouse to market with Android support. But even if they don’t, Clubhouse has generated a lot of ill will among Android users. 

6. All the journalists and other prominent thought leaders are on Twitter. The press will amplify Spaces events far more than Clubhouse ones. The media killed Google+ because it posed a threat to their beloved Twitter. The press repeated the "ghost town" lie for years until through endless repetition they made it true. And journalist Twitter users will do the same thing to Clubhouse. 

7. People want fewer social networks. Social networking fatigue is real, and people don't want to switch between more social apps and maintain multiple social groupings than necessary. Twitter's embrace of social audio means people can delete the Clubhouse app, and many will do so. 

8. Twitter threads are awful. Twitter's 280-character limit suffocates some expression, so users turn to Twitter threads, which don't really work. They're annoying to follow, and many users just don't bother. Spaces will prove to be a better way to handle longer conversations than threads. 

9. Clubhouse has privacy and security issues. Stanford researchers say the found vulnerabilities in Clubhouse's infrastructure, enabling authoritarian regimes to trace and track users. They even found evidence that Clubhouse data was "being relayed to servers we believe to be hosted in” the People’s Republic of China, and found that audio was being sent to “to servers managed by Chinese entities and distributed around the world.” Twitter has more experience with security, and so may be more trusted than Clubhouse to safeguard user privacy. 

Yes, it’s early to be calling winners and losers in a nascent media space. But from what I can see, Twitter has all the advantages.