Mike's List 249

Why Spaces beats Clubhouse. Plus: handsy robots, cardboard video games and serial killer staycations.

Feb 18, 2021

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.

Mike’s List of Brilliantly Bad Ideas

1. Robots that do nothing but hug people

Robots are dancing, climbing walls and performing complex autonomous maneuvers these days. That's why it's confusing that scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and ETH in Zürich, Switzerland, create a robot that does nothing but hug people. Don't get me wrong. It's really good at hugging people, using artificial intelligence to figure out when and how much to hug. It reads subtle human cues to decide when to initiate a hug and when to stop. Called HuggieBot 2.0, the robot uses it's inflatable torso, padded robot arms other soft hardware to do the hugging. Researchers are also working on an app that would enable two robots in two locations to transmit a hug from one person to another at any distance. The scientists are hoping that a hug from a fake person has a similar effect as from a real person — lower stress, sense of wellbeing, etc. But isn't the whole point of a hug that you're making human contact?

2. Cardboard video games

Some knucklehead losing his mind in lockdown named Bill Thorpe re-created the old Doom 2 video game out of cardboard. Thorpe's YouTube channel is called "Games Made of Cardboard." The cardboard Doom 2 took 9 months to make. Doom II creator John Romero even makes a cameo appearance in the video game.

3. AirBnBs that were locations for serial killer movies

I've stayed in a lot of AirBnBs — in fact when there isn't a pandemic I stay primarily in AirBnBs so I can live in different places all over the world. But I'd never rent "Buffalo Bill's" house from "Silence of the Lambs." The house was recently sold and the new owner wants to turn it into an AirBnB. One wonders if the bathroom will have a basket with lotion in it, along with a sewing kit.

Mike’s List of Shameless Self Promotions

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