Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Is Clubhouse Just a Feature? Should YouTube Disable the Dislike Button?

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

This week, Marques and Andrew quickly rank some of the best and worst April Fools' Day articles and videos on the web, before having a lively debate about whether Clubhouse should be a standalone platform or merely a feature within an existing platform. Finally, they close out the episode with a grab-bag of headlines including the possible elimination of YouTube's dislike button, the Xiaomi Mi Mix Fold, and WWDC 2021! Links: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://twitter.com/AdamLukas17 https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com Music by KamrenB: https://spoti.fi/2WRJOFh Mac: https://www.instagram.com/picturesofmac/ Razer April Fools: https://bit.ly/3cHKIwD Cyber Mouse and FanFan: https://bit.ly/3sIMUJR Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit superstore.ca to get started. With Uber Reserve, you can book your Uber ride in advance. 90 days in advance. Perfect for all you forward thinkers and planning gurus. Reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance. Uber Reserve. Seeber app for details hello welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast we're your hosts i'm marquez and i'm andrew this week we talk a lot about clubhouse and specifically is clubhouse a whole platform or maybe just a feature we also talk about youtube getting rid of the dislike button And I'm Andrew. This week, we talk a lot about Clubhouse, and specifically, is Clubhouse a whole platform

or maybe just a feature? We also talk about YouTube getting rid of the dislike button, and then we have a grab bag of other news. But first, yesterday was April Fool's Day. And by the time you hear this, it was one of the most controversial, fun, maybe cringe days on the internet. It's just kind of the way it is on the internet every year.

Last year, 2020's April Fool's's just kind of the way it is on the internet every year. Last year, 2020's April Fool's Day was kind of canceled, of course, because of the state of the world. Reasonably so. Reasonably acceptable to cancel all of that. This year it kind of came back in a couple forms. I'll give a couple shoutouts to some of the good ones I saw because we appreciate a good

April Fool's Day gag, if you want to call it that, or having some fun on social. It's Twitter. It's whatever. It's not a huge deal, but there are some good ones. We made our video finally reviewing Mac. Yeah. The greatest Mac reviewer, your highest rated Mac. 100%. The highest rated product I've ever given a rating to 11 out of 10, the goodest boy, for sure. There is dual monochrome sensors with autofocus assist by this middle sensor that the manufacturer calls a snout sensor. Definitely worth a watch.

It's honestly better. It's just as good to watch it not on April Fool's Day. It's a legit review. I do want to say, since we've posted it, Dog Rates has come out and given an expert score, and he is officially a 13 out of 10. I'm willing to accept. Dreams come true.

I'll accept that that's probably a more unbiased source of a rating. We might be a little bit too close to the development process to give it a fair rating, so I feel like that's probably okay. So, yeah, we'll pup grade him to a 13 out of 10. Shout out to Dog Rates. No, I saw RGB stuff from Razer, which shouldn't be a surprise. They're always all over just making products for fun.

So on April Fool's Day, they launched Razer RGB hair dye. They called it Rapunzel. They made a whole promo video and a whole site and a whole Instagram AR filter where you can essentially dye your hair RGB. I'd expect nothing less from Razer. Like chroma RGB, like animations and everything. Yeah. Plugs into their system, the whole thing. I feel like this was the least they could do. So well done. Well done. It was really well done. A perfect example of like going the extra mile

to like create the product video and the product packaging and everything and obviously fake, but still really like funny and relevant to their products. Time to glow up with the all new Razer Rapunzel Chroma Hair Dye. Good harmless fun. Also, we were like scrolling down the site and I think you mentioned offhand like, you know what would take this to the next level is if they made like some sort of like app where you could actually look at yourself with RGB hair. And then we found the Instagram filter and it was, it was perfect. I will also give a shout out

to motion VFX, a smaller company that makes a lot of actually the final cut pro plugins that I use and that I really like and that we have here at the studio. They happened to make a, uh, they made a plugin or they, sorry, they made a promo video for a plugin that would bring final cut pro to the apple watch which was hilarious and obviously it's the sort of splashy like apple style promo video of like we're finally doing it you can color grade on the tiny screen on your watch and it's it's great i think we'll try to link this stuff in the show yeah i'll make sure i link everything did you have any april fool's day stuff you appreciated? I really, really liked and this was more of just, or no, I think they actually

made the app, but it's like super simple. I don't have who made it, but I'll post it in the show notes. It's called FanFan. It's an app for M1 Macs in case you want to replicate

the noise of a fan. I guess if you missed it because it is now fanless, which I just thought was hilarious. It kind of reminds me of we're seeing all these ev cars that we we review that have like the uh the fake motor noise because everyone misses it that's really funny so for our so for those who who miss the fan noise but don't

have any fans exactly and then uh satoshi made a cyber mouse which is like a mouse that looks just like a cyber truck i'm pretty sure that's just a render it was a really well done render and it was really funny and i saw that one another one of those things where like this is a joke but if you made it people would definitely buy it it was the opposite of ergonomical i can tell you that yeah it looked just like the truck yeah yeah but i bet it's probably nicer than some mice that are actually out there if they created it despite that. But what we really want to talk about in dead last of the power rankings for April Fool's jokes, Volkswagen comes in. And this was just a story you've probably seen that has frustrated me to no end.

And I'm sure the people at The Verge are so frustrated about this. They made a whole article today about why April Fool's is the worst. And I totally get where they're coming from. So explain what happened with Volkswagen and then we can go into why it was a bad idea. So what was it? It was like two days before April Fool's, the Verge had an article saying that Volkswagen was rebranding their North American division to Volkswagen, V-O-L-T-S, like an electrical volt, to kind of show off how committed they are to electrifying their product lineup and how many electric... I think they now, in some weird way, consider themselves one of the largest electric auto manufacturers because VW Group owns Porsche and Audi and everyone. So it felt really weird.

It's like got a nice little pun to it, but it really felt like an April Fool's joke. And coming two days before April Fool's, everyone just assumed it was an April Fool's joke. Rule number one of April Fool's Day is it is April Fool's Day. It is not the week before April Fool's Day. Oh, yeah, we'll get into that for sure. But it was weird because it was also described as a leak. Like it was a leaked memo. They like posted it and then took it out. Right. So it was a memo that was leaked, that was shared, that was reported on, and then deleted. So it didn't feel like a harmless April Fool's Day joke. It felt like

a bait and switch, which was, it was just originally just this leak that was reported on and everyone emails Volkswagen for confirmation of what's happening because, hey, we're reporting a story about your company. As a journalist, we might as well email you and ask you for your comment on this.

And Volkswagen's official response comments were confirming that this was what they were actually going to do. They confirmed it was real. The rebrand was real, but it accidentally got like scheduled and posted too early. It was supposed to come at the end of April instead. Right. So as an April Fool's Day like prank, this would have been fine if they didn't do that

part. This is my hot take is like this could have actually been fine if they didn't do that part this is my this is my hot take is like this could have actually been like a an okay decent april fool's day gag if they didn't do that part like if they just said hey happy april 1st like on april fool's day we're rebranding as volkswagen which is like kind of something i could see them doing to be honest which is like a really cringy rebrand of half their company to signify their move towards electric vehicles haha fine not really happening but the the extra part of like going out of their way to lie to people to make sure they tricked people was a little much so that's where i think they they came in dead last i yeah

it's like first of all april fool Day is, we just all expect the cringe. Like you can have, you can have, you get free cringe marketing and it automatically becomes kind of funny or entertaining at least because you're scrolling through a ton of it. And if you are just the least cringey, but still cringey, then it's, you're probably net positive.

Par for the course. So let's go back to the timing first here. Like two days before is not cool. So let's go back to the timing first here. Two days before is not cool. April Fool's Day is a day. I don't want April Fool's Day to turn into Black Friday, which has an entire week of savings before it. April Fool's is a marketing holiday at this point. It is not really anything other than that. Let's stop turning these marketing holidays into week-long things. Make Christmas week-long. I'll take that, but not April Fool's Day. You know what it kind of feels like?

It kind of feels like a bad embargo. Like everyone knows April 1st at the clock strikes midnight is green light to do April Fool's Day stuff. But I feel like over the past couple of years, we've started to see it trickle out into the day before and like the night before. Or like people breaking the embargo. Yeah before like people breaking the embargo yeah like people breaking the embargo a little bit and now this like volkswagen one was two days before april

first which is really way too far but uh i feel like as soon as it's the the morning of april first everyone's green lights are on and then if you're not early like when you see a joke that that's like a brand new thing on the night of april 1st i feel like you're tired of it by then so they all want to be early so i think that's kind of feeding into it it's extending to the day before which sucks i think my like my biggest gripe with the whole thing was that when companies reached out to confirm it they confirmed it and just continue you're not joking anymore you're just lying at that point. And if you have a quality joke that might actually trick people for a couple of minutes, like then you've nailed April fool's day.

Like that's kind of what you want. Like two to three minutes of thinking like, oh goodness, is this real? Like, oh, that's kind of weird. I wonder why they do that. Oh, why are they doing this? And then you're like, oh, it's April fool's day. I remember. But if you're just not even on the day lying, like if you make that joke and people reach out, just say like, we have no comment on it right now. Or like, we do not confirm that, blah, blah, blah. And let it still fester as like an idea.

We have no comment at this time. That should have been their comment, yeah. The minute you lie about that, I would be so mad if I were The Verge. Like I would be furious. And I can't imagine they're not I'm sure they're not happy about that because it makes them look bad

but it's not their fault well yeah I mean they can they wrote everything that Volkswagen did and people believing the article isn't a reflection on the people who reported it it's a reflection on Volkswagen and what they decided to say but yeah no I think if this was like a totally ridiculous thing we wouldn't expect Volkswagen to

do they wouldn't have had to do this crazy stunt they could just go we're making a car that flies and then everyone would go Volkswagen do you have a comment on this and they would go yeah we're making a comment that flies and everyone goes yeah okay whatever and then they know what to say but the fact that this was such a believable evolution, because Volkswagen has actually been pushing for a long time at being at the forefront of electric vehicle stuff. And the fact that they would actually rebrand part of their company to reflect that doesn't seem that insane. So that combined with the awful way of faking a leak

was a pretty big swing and a miss there but but like you said to start this whole thing off is if they did that press release article on april fool's day as just volkswagen it still would have brought the attention to their ev stuff it would have been a funny headline on april fool's day and it would have been obvious it was april fool's day and there would be zero backlash on it. They would have just gotten to make their bad pun and then Dieter probably would have liked it because he likes puns. Now he hates it. Now he hates the pun. Yeah. If you ruin Dieter puns, Volkswagen, there's no forgiving that. So the cardinal sins that Volkswagen stacked on top of each other for their brand's April Fool's Day was number one, not doing it on April Fool's Day.

Number two, not making it a harmless joke, but actually making it a somewhat believable cringy thing you might actually do, but aren't. And number three, faking a leak

and then actually lying to press who went to you to confirm it. Again, not on April Fool's Day. So if you're a brand out there thinking about enjoying and participating in the April 1st cringe, just don't stack those things on top Fool's Day. So if you're a brand out there thinking about enjoying and participating in the April 1st cringe, just don't stack those things

on top of each other. Just try to minimize that. Or don't do any of them. Exactly. All right, we'll leave it at that. We'll take a quick break and when we come back, we'll talk about Clubhouse.

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But now is the time to aim even higher. You can help create a world where no one is left behind. Donate at CAMH.ca slash donate now from December 23rd to the 31st, and your gift will be tripled for three times the impact. All right, so here's CAMH.ca slash donate now from December 23rd to the 31st, and your gift will be tripled for three times the impact. All right, so here's a thought. Yeah. Clubhouse. What exactly is Clubhouse?

I've been on Clubhouse for a little bit. We've described it. We know what it is, this audio-only social network which has all these cool interview shows and this fun FOMO factor because it's only live and there's no recordings. But the question of like, will it last keeps coming up. The question of what exactly is the future of Clubhouse keeps coming up. And so I'm just going to give you a question. You can tell me what you think

the answer might be. Is Clubhouse a social network, like a platform or a feature and i say this because we've had like sort of versions of this conversation before but it's kind of interesting this this uh this trajectory all these different trajectories that clubhouse could possibly take in the future they could just expand forever and be here to stay and be one of the rare new major social networks, or they could expand, fizzle out, have a problem with interestingness as it's been described and die. Or maybe it lives somewhere in the middle. It gets acquired, it gets, you know, competed against by a bunch of different other companies. But I'm curious what you, how you feel about the, the initial question, which is, is Clubhouse a platform or a feature? I mean, I would initially say feature just because I don't think it has the I shouldn't say it doesn't have the opportunity or the capability of like eventually becoming a full blown social platform.

I just feel like it is. I don't think there's one thing I can say about this right now that doesn't lead into like eight billion different arguments. There's two arguments for it. There's two sides for sure. Hopefully we're going to cover a lot of that in this conversation. We just kind of went off on this conversation and just decided to run into the podcast room and record it. But to me, especially with all these bigger companies already trying to copy it, it feels like it is obviously something that people assume is here to stay. So I will agree with that. I think there's a lot of people who think it's a fad. I don't think it's a fad. I think it has use. And I think a lot of people are really enjoying it.

I just see it so easily copyable. And there are so many companies out there with the means to copy it and are already copying it and or are planning to copy it. We just, I think in this week we saw like LinkedIn, Spotify and someone else. Slack, I think. Slack, yeah, LinkedIn, Spotify and Slack all working on competitors towards it. And this is after we already saw Twitter doing spaces

and we saw Instagram's half-assed attempt at trying to like give you four live camera, whatever, but still obviously a push because of clubhouse. So it is something that is here to stay and people want it. But I think that brings in the argument. Is it a feature? I think it works better on an already thought out social platform or a platform with other things. And it is a part of that platform. Interesting. That's always a, that is a good way of looking at it. And I tend to agree mostly that it is a feature mostly because we see it being copied inside of like Twitter spaces as a feature

inside Twitter. But I think there's a devil's advocate argument about why it's its own platform and why we're talking about Clubhouse more than any of the others. Like we know about Twitter and we know about Twitter spaces, but even if it's just as widely available, matter of fact, I think Twitter spaces is now more widely available than Clubhouse just because it's on Android. It still seems to have that it factor where if you can have an entire team and an entire company focused on iterating on this one idea, maybe that's better. Maybe that's better. Now here's the, here's the path that could go down that I kind of see it. We were talking about Snapchat. Snapchat is a, an entire

company built around one basic idea and they've had a bunch of success around a bunch of other different platforms like their AR stuff and their shows. But generally, Snapchat is a social network where you can send disappearing images and videos and post disappearing stories. Yeah. And that turned into a feature inside of everything, like literally LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. Everyone has stories now. Yeah, they have stories. It turned into a feature.

So it kind of ended up just being a feature, and now Snapchat is just one of the many versions of it. My question is, is Clubhouse, like, protectable? Like, is there anything unique about Clubhouse that they could say, ah, you can't actually copy that? I'm no lawyer. No legal advice here. But I think Snapchat's the most interesting way of thinking about this

because just imagining like, is this really easily replicable? If you think about Twitter, who couldn't create a platform where you can just tweet 140, 240 characters? If you think about Facebook, who couldn't just create something where you have a very simple profile where you talk about your day and post a couple of pictures or Instagram. Those all seem super, super replicable and easy. The issue is, is that all of those became these like major, major mainstream programs and social platforms that the audience being there is, is impossible to compete with them. Like they semi compete with each other, but they built themselves up big enough to become so mainstream and have so many users that ultimately on a social platform, users are the most important thing. And those can't be beat.

Snapchat is interesting because it came out and it was its own platform. Everybody had it. It was very new with a disappearing sending before stories really came out. It was its own thing. Yeah. And then when they did stories, people liked it. And then all those other platforms were like, wait a minute, we have a bigger audience. That's kind of close to what we're kind of doing already. Yeah.

And they have the social graph already, too. So people already are following groups of people. So you wouldn't you wouldn't want to sign up. This is this is why I think if you're working for Clubhouse or if you're a Clubhouse stan or if you know you think Clubhouse is here to stay, this is definitely something to think about is how do they keep Clubhouse and these. If you're at Clubhouse, how do you keep this format unique to Clubhouse and in a way that people want to go to Clubhouse for it and not use it as a feature in something else? That's the real question. And right now it seems like the most powerful version of that is these random flashpan, either viral shows or celebrity like moments. Like I think just as we record this on Wednesday, I think yesterday, Justin Bieber was on Clubhouse for the first time. And like, that's a thing that

just instantly trends on Twitter and like people are talking about it, but also like, you know, Mr. Beast going on doing a show or Elon Musk or Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg just popping on clubhouse and doing a show and the FOMO factor, because it happens, it doesn't really get recorded and distributed anywhere else. And then it's over. And if you weren't there, you missed it. That sort of thing is really hard to replicate and is probably clubhouse best asset. And if you weren't there, you missed it. That sort of thing is really hard to replicate and is probably Clubhouse's best asset. Because if you're like Spotify, for example, and you can talk about how you think, you know, maybe Spotify should have bought Clubhouse. But like, how do you replicate that? You can't really, you know, we talk about how much creators

sort of end up controlling the destiny of these early apps for sure and the audience as well just the audience for sure if you are if you're a clubhouse competitor how do you like create those moments on your network you can't really just throw a bunch of money at you know a show host and say hey do your show over on Spotify. Mixer, mixer, mixer, mixer, mixer. Yeah, exactly. You can, or even if you do, like there are actually Clubhouse shows that are repeatable formats that will host guests and that will bring people on. If that show gets pulled from, say, Clubhouse to Spotify, does that show still have the same guest drawing power as it did on Clubhouse? I don't think so. And so this is, I guess, one of my main arguments for that is you were saying how does somebody

grab, you know, exactly, grab the audience as normally you would get it from the creator. The creator would bring their audience. I think the biggest creators right now on Clubhouse are the big creators because they're on Clubhouse. They're not because they're the creator name. Elon Musk, I don't think is like, oh, I'd love to be on the Good Time Show. Oh, it's on Clubhouse. I'll download it. He's like, Clubhouse is huge. Everyone's talking about it. I'd like to talk on Clubhouse. What is my biggest platform on Clubhouse? So I think that's what's really drawing people in. I think my argument to what you are

saying though, is how do these other companies get that? I think what that is right now is hype and it is, it is working great. Like clubhouses has a ton of hype behind it. It is really hard to organically grow that. The issue is, is for that to grow further past the hype. You can't have hype forever. That's just nothing has ever had that. Yeah. So what clubhouse would have to do in order to grow is incorporate all these different social aspects that every other platform that wants to do the Clubhouse thing has already and has an audience and has members, has the social part of the social aspect. So it is much easier for them to develop.

It's just an audio, no yeah chat room with an audience that's so much easier than growing a user base a social aspect chat and discovery and all that because I still don't use clubhouse I don't have an iPhone but I think I've seen a couple things like the discovery aspect of clubhouse is not good it's not great or well fleshed out but that's also because there's this this novelty factor where when you get a new social network, you don't know who of your friends are on it. You don't know who of the people you already know you like following in other places is

on it. So you're just kind of poking around. And they've got some built-in mechanisms where you can follow topics and get up to date on rooms around these topics and find people to follow that you might not have heard of in other places. But the thing about Clubhouse that I think is maybe its biggest challenge is when you visit someone's profile, you don't see any of their body of work unless they do their best to describe it in text. You don't have their Clubhouse body of work.

So think about it. On Twitter, when I go to your Twitter profile, how do I decide if I'm going to follow you or not? I read some of your tweets., how do I decide if I'm going to follow you or not? I read some of your tweets. You scroll down, yeah. I scroll down. I can see some of your tweets, your pictures, and then I can decide in the moment,

I want to see more of this, I'm going to follow. If I'm going on Facebook or if I'm going literally anywhere, Instagram, it's a whole grid. If I'm going to follow you, let me just scroll down a little bit, check out what are the things I'm going to see. If I'm on YouTube, literally it's a catalog right there. If I'm on Clubhouse and I come across a bunch of people who I think are pretty cool on Clubhouse, but I don't

really know, I don't have any preview of what I'm going to get when I follow this person on Clubhouse. And that is probably both its biggest strength and its biggest weakness is it's so ephemeral and disappearing that you want to be on Clubhouse so you don't miss the thing. But when you're trying to decide how to curate and follow on this new network, you know, I decided to follow, you know, a bunch of people that I know from Twitter and then they're never in rooms and it doesn't matter. So I need to find new ways of engaging. So it's kind of its biggest strength and weakness. In that sense, it almost feels like the difference between YouTubers who ask you to smash the like button and subscribe before they've done literally anything in the video versus people

who give a well thought out video. And at the end, they're like, oh, by the way, if you really enjoyed this, like you should probably subscribe and see more. Yeah, it's hard to do that because there's no body of work. You have to kind of hope or you have to find a good way of discovery to get into these rooms and then realize like, oh, that guy, I really liked his line of thinking or his arguments, or I would like to listen to him at other times and then follow them through that. It feels like the two biggest arguments you've made towards Clubhouse were the hype behind it and the novelty behind it. And I just, none of those sound like long-term

adjectives I would want to use for any type of company. Right. So that's probably the biggest indicator that Clubhouse, and we already know it's a very in-the-moment thing. Like I think it's a perfect time for something like Clubhouse to come up where people are at home and listening to live rooms and don't want to have their camera on.

Like all this stuff makes perfect sense for right now, but that's sort of like the perfect argument for it's going to go away. Basically. I think it's, I think it's bubbled right now, but kind of like what, what people said is that the, it's a bubble that's going to pop, but it's not going to eliminate it. I still think there, it is something that will stay. I just don't know if it has the staying power to be its own solo app. You have to realize every time you have your own app, that is just another app. Everyone has to download on their phone. Everyone has to just think again about a new login information. It all sounds really petty, but these are things that are preventing people from joining new things. So if that is incorporated into Twitter or incorporated into Spotify,

it's just super different. Everybody has Twitter. Everyone has Spotify already. It's way easier. So, I mean, my ultimate thought behind this and, you know, I've never owned a company that has looked to buy out a company or ever owned a company that's looked to sell to a company, but it makes perfect sense for me for someone like Spotify who just recently bought a a program called locker room which i think is like a sports dedicated kind of clubhouse deal because and they're just using the technology to create their own clubhouse but feature a big company like spotify that you've said it i think you uh mentioned they want to be like the audio hub

of the internet that they would then try and acquire clubhouse let it keep its name keep the hype and everything behind it now but then give to clubhouse all the benefits of being a giant company like spotify with users everyone who owns spotify is already listening to audio all the time podcasts music. Now this is just another audio format that it's bringing all of their users to and you get all the benefits of having developers and a team and research and development of Spotify. So this is what I was gonna ask you. So what I was gonna say, what is like your,

what do you think should be the future of Clubhouse? Should they go standalone? Should they eventually get bought? Sounds like you think Spotify should be the one. My question is, do you think they should buy Clubhouse but then let them continue to operate in a separate app owned by Spotify with support? Or should it be built into Spotify,

which I think is what Spotify wants, where they have Spotify Music, Spotify Podcasts, and then Spotify Live, and that's where Clubhouse went. Is that what you think? I feel like I could see that being a net benefit for both because Clubhouse now has just so much more access to users. I mean, the first thing you think about is not being available for Android,

which is the reason why I've never checked out a Clubhouse room. I've been on Twitter spaces before. I think I hopped on one that you and Austin were in just because it was on Twitter and I just opened it. I wasn't doing anything. Exactly. So that's just another avenue where if you're in Spotify already, like trying to find a podcast to listen to on the car ride or trying to find a playlist to listen to on

the train, like, oh, there's a live room with a creator that I like. And it's just there in my audio app that I default look at no matter what, when I want to listen to something, it seems like it would make way more sense. I totally understand. I don't know the people who own Clubhouse. I don't know what it's like to create something that blows up this big. I'm sure they have a ton of passion behind it, and I'm sure they'd be worried about being bought out by a giant company and things changing. But to me, that feels like the best way to have a longer tail on this and to make sure it doesn't die out or get killed we if you go all the way back to now when we were talking about snapchat

snapchat was around for years and got completely destroyed by instagram coming out with stories and now clubhouse has been around for a couple months and there's like 12 competitors to it already yeah that's tough yeah so i guess i would be worried if you were at clubhouse yeah yeah i think if i if i was at clubhouse you know i see all the competitors coming up who are doing very similar things borderline copying with slight differences maybe maybe if you're at clubhouse you want to focus on the content itself and the things that make Clubhouse interesting, which is like the shows that people make, the viral moments, the people, the personalities, but also giving tools to those people to make more and to possibly monetize what

they do. That's not a thing that exists on Clubhouse yet. And then once you're there, you kind of think about new ways to make it better, which is sort of a super basic explanation of it. But just keeping it like very pure to Clubhouse. But if it does get bought, I think they should keep the name Clubhouse because that's so much attached to the Clubhouse name. And I ultimately think they probably will end up getting turned into a feature. Yeah, I think ultimately. Whether it's the Snapchat way or not.

That is a good point, though. It needs to keep Clubhouse. If anyone buys it, it needs to be Clubhouse is now owned by the parent company, Spotify, is owned by the parent company, LinkedIn, is owned by the parent company, Slack. Like, it needs to keep the name.

I guess that and the integration with an app like Spotify makes it much harder because I highly doubt Spotify wants to have like a Clubhouse button. That's the thing though. That's what they get out of buying Clubhouse because Clubhouse doesn't make money right now.

Clubhouse doesn't have ads, doesn't have monetization. No, but Spotify gives it the power to like have that. I mean, ultimately right now, Clubhouse is trying to figure out, they have a million different things they have to do. They're a small team. I'm sure they've gotten much bigger because they have a huge influx in money because they're doing great. They're huge. It makes sense. But they still need to figure out what's going to be the next big step, whether that's finding new ways for the creators to be able to stay on and make some money off of that or an Android app

or a web app or like there's so many different things they probably have to do where if you join a giant team like Spotify, you have half those teams already and you can bring them in and you just get so much more support and you don't have to build from the bottom up. I mean, again, I am clearly no expert. This is just like a total consumer's thought process on this. Yeah, I just think there's definitely a thought process to acquiring a company. There is AquaHires, which is like, we're just buying your tech, we're just buying your team, or we're buying the user base, or we're buying all of it and the hype that comes with it. And I imagine a clubhouse acquisition, if it ever happened,

would be very, very expensive. And they would want to get as much benefit out of that as possible, whether it's under their own name or whether it's financial. And I really think Clubhouse having like a couple billion dollar valuation is not because it's making tons of money. It doesn't seem to be. It's more because it's it commands the attention that can be turned into money later. Yeah. And so if you're Spotify buying Clubhouse, just as like our theoretical example, I feel like Spotify wants everyone to use the Spotify app as the hub to the Internet. And so if they can just buy Clubhouse, plug it into Spotify, and put a Clubhouse button inside Spotify, and it does the thing Clubhouse does, that's their dream.

Because they just got all of the hype and none of the money, and they can turn it into money later. But if they did this other version where they bought Clubhouse, left it as its own app, and plugged in their own engineering and helped it make money, I don't think it would ever pay for itself. I think they need as much to go to Spotify, the app as possible. But again, that's just both of us like sort of guesstimating what we think might happen. We should probably take a break from all of this guesstimating and come back to some actual stuff that's happening. So let's do

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So speaking of social networks and features, YouTube had this little fun, interesting idea. And I'm just going to read it. An original idea. Original. Well, I'm just going to read it. Let's see. This is a tweet from YouTube from March 30th.

In response to creator feedback around well-being and targeted dislike campaigns, we're testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count. If you're part of the small experiment, you might spot one of these designs in the coming weeks.

Example below. Then a screenshot of a video that shows the amount of dislikes. Then below that tweet, there's a screenshot where it shows a thumbs up button with the number of likes, a dislike button with no number, and then share and download and save and all that stuff. So kind of in the same vein as like instagram not showing likes maybe it's in the same vein as twitter i don't know facebook getting rid of dislike

remember the dislike button i forgot about that yeah the dislike button on facebook but now they have like the angry face yeah uh which i guess is just a weirder dislike but initial initial thoughts on youtube getting rid of the dislike button. Initial thoughts make sense. I can see how it could help creator wellbeing. I mean, if you are like, it says dislike campaigns. I think those happen. I don't think they're as like common as we might say. I don't think it's, it's like a plague that's happening around YouTube and maybe not something big enough to create a whole new like feature on. But it definitely, I mean, like there are people who dislike a bunch of videos and some people focus on it a little too much. But then after that initial thought,

I'm just like, I don't think this is good. Yeah, this is awful to me. This is absolutely awful. And they absolutely shouldn't do it. And I think they got ratioed hard enough to understand that, but often it's hard to understand what YouTube gets and doesn't get. So I just want to put out all of the reasons why this is a bad idea. Okay, number one, feedback is important, and there's a lot of social networks that are fine with not having a dislike rating. When there's a piece of content you either like or comment on, like Instagram,

there really isn't any usefulness to a dislike button on Instagram. But if you do want feedback about something, you'll get comments. And if it's a bad piece, you'll get a bunch of comments that bubble to the top

and you can't really curate those comments other than pinning one of them. You have to see those comments. On YouTube, the dislike button is incredibly useful. Number one, because, you know, see those comments on youtube the dislike button is incredibly useful number one because you know they mentioned first of all they mentioned i'll just talk about the

first thing they they address which is uh dislike campaigns and creator well-being the dislike count still shows up in your studio you're still going to see how many dislikes a video has. So it's really all it's doing is hiding the public facing dislike count, which is not useful because there's going to be a lot of videos that should have a high dislike ratio. And that immediately is sort of like a sentiment bar for when you arrive at a video. Let's say you arrive at a video that you've been searching for this video about a topic. And you arrive at a six minute video saying it's going to show something and it has a really great thumbnail. It has three likes and 50 dislikes.

What do you immediately know? That never gets addressed. This video is not gonna be representative of the thumbnail or it's not going to be good. I'm gonna save my time clicking around this 10 minute video and leave. Like the dislike count is actually useful. Now there are a dislike campaigns or highly disliked videos. YouTube, you might've been familiar with this one, a YouTube rewind a little,

not too long ago, I might've been involved in that video. Uh, it's the number one, most disliked video of all time. But guess what we learned from that, that it was a bad video because if you had gone to that video, let me just pull this up real quick, and it has the dislike button hidden, you would pull up that video for YouTube Rewind and you would see that that video has 214 million views and 2.9 million likes. And you would go on to say, all right, this is probably pretty good. And if you didn't scroll down and start looking at the comments which can be curated by the uploader then this would seem like a pretty good video which you might miss is it has 19 million dislikes which is very very important

to knowing how people feel about the video so that's just a couple reasons why it's a bad idea there's other things just because again when you, when you can upload spam and like, anytime someone disables likes or comments, you already know that's a red flag. And I think disabling the dislikes for free allows a lot of bad actors to get away with their stuff. When they just disable comments and leave likes on, that's just going to look like wrong. Like you need some way to indicate that your a lot of bad scam channels out there that are just pushing like fake V bucks or live streams that are Bitcoin live streams. And like YouTube, if you want to tell us that you've greatly increased your moderation and you can deal with all of that, take away the dislike button. If you actually got rid of all your AI

stuff and have good moderation, sure. Take away the dislike button, but you don't. And that's not going to happen. Yeah. The dislike button is But you don't and that's not going to happen. Yeah, the dislike button is important. There are scammers out there who are drooling right now because all their videos and live streams are just going to have a bunch of likes and no red flags on them at all. Exactly. The comment section can be curated. Imagine a terrible YouTuber apology that doesn't take any credit for their actions

and just like posts it to their core audience and their core audience likes it and they get a bunch of likes. But all the people who realize that this is a bad video don't have that voice heard or that version of response expressed because the comments are carefully curated or disabled entirely. You can delete comments you don't like, just like Instagram and Facebook, but you can also just heart a bunch of comments. You can also reply to comments and they bubble to the top. You can just change the way comments look. So the dislike button being the last version of a thing where people can tell you that this wasn't a good video, removing the public facing version, just the public facing version. That's the thing. Leaving the button.

Your main argument is still there. Leaving the button, leaving the feedback, actual implementation and the engagement and the counter in the creator studio, but just removing the public facing most useful version

of why that button exists is not useful in any way. If the way you're saying it's useful is creator well-being, it's not accomplishing that, this is a terrible idea. If anything,

if you really are worried about the creator well-being, make there like a toggle option so as anything, if you really are worried about the creator well-being, make there like a toggle option. So as a creator, you don't see the like dislike ratio on any of your videos or in your account, but it's still a public facing thing. And sure, like they can go around it and still find it, but they can do that now. And you don't have any of the benefits of being an audience member and seeing those

red flags of the actual dislike button. Yeah. Yeah. It just feels weird. If you were really that worried about creator well-being, then just take the dislike button out completely, like Facebook did. But don't.

But don't, yeah. But don't. Okay, let's say they do. Let's say they go, you know what? This all makes sense. We should just remove the dislike button completely. Then it sort of just turns into a feed of generic thumbs-up content.

You know how you see a Netflix show where the rating is like 78% and you're like thinking about, huh, is that high enough for me to click it or not? You don't even have that anymore. It just is a popularity counter. Yeah. Which is like what Instagram already is,

which is what retweets already are. So yeah. If you look back at Instagrams, there's made a little more sense because you were also going to take away the positive aspect of it as well. And you were just going to assume that your stuff was either good or if people commented on it, it was probably pretty good. And that way you weren't always judging yourself based on even all the good feedback. It felt a little more useful. This

is basically just like every single YouTube channel that doesn't want to deal with bad feedback is just going to turn into their own little echo chamber of like, I can just make everything look fantastic on this. And my audience is going to be none the wiser because there's no way for them to ever figure out if I'm deceiving people or just have bad content. And yeah, it's just a waste of everybody's time. So many reasons for everything we talked about for scams, for conspiracy theories, for all these things. Not a good call. OK, well, that was the top of the grab bag list. You seem pretty enthusiastic about that.

Yeah, I just wanted to get that out of the way. Also, but we can get into WWDC, which is coming June 7th officially, which is a pretty positive piece of news. It is virtual only again this year, which makes a lot of sense. Flying a lot of people in isn't exactly the best idea yet. We're almost there.

The light's at the end of the tunnel, but it is virtual in June. The teasers went out and they were of, you know, animo, emojis, me-mojis. It's a me-moji for a person, right? I always see people say animoji, but that's the animals. That's animals, right. But are we animals?

I guess technically they are animals. We are animals. Animojis. But anyway. All right. They're wearing glasses, and the glasses are reflecting the date and it's sort of an homage to the Craig Federighi moment from that last Apple presentation.

But of course, everyone's reading into the glasses on the emoji saying there's going to be some sort of AR glasses presentation or some sort of reveal or product or some sort of glasses related thing. It's been rumored for like two years now that they're working on some sort of ar glasses or headset or whatever i think it was just their creative way of being able to use the craig meme while also having the reflection of the calendar which is the very very clear date for it is like yeah every it's

like when some people we do easter eggs in videos. And when some people try way too hard to find some of the Easter eggs there, I think people are just overlooking into this when in reality is a very obvious Easter egg for the date. I just got a great, great video idea. Nobody steal this. Okay. Nobody steal this video. Pinky swear, stick your pinky out to your speaker right now. Pause this video. Tweet at me saying you won't steal this video. Okay. But we should go back through time and analyze companies' press events that are notorious for having Easter eggs in them. And see who has held the most Easter eggs. Because you know every time there's a new Apple event, everyone overanalyzes every single little

thing about it. And I want to know who's actually like hiding a lot of good information in them. Remember when Tesla had like a bunch of text in the shadows and you brightened it and you could see like, nice try, but you can't actually see the rest of the car. Like these are the types of things I want to go back and see. Like we do overanalyze, but should we even be? That's why I'd like to have like somebody on the podcast sometime that is the person who works on those specific little things like you know someone has

like a real job doing that or even just like some of these social media managers who are actually doing well um that just seems like such a fascinating job that i would love to hear how much research they do to see and how in these communities they are to see like what people are going. I mean, I get overanalyzing things. It's super fun. It's like you're Nicolas Cage in National Treasure. Everyone wants to be Nick Cage.

I mean, so it makes sense, but I really don't think AR glasses are going to be at WWDC. I think there's some rumors that it might come out sometime this year. I don't think even, maybe an announcement. I would say the best thing we'll get this year is an announcement that they're like being worked on

and maybe you get to see them. But I honestly don't even think that happens in 2021. The one reason I could see it happening is because it's a developer conference and they need, in order to kickstart, jumpstart this whole world of new AR-related apps, they need to get this new platform in the hands of developers. And so developers get really excited about certain things, like software, like the Mac Pro, because you can code on this.

This machine is going to compile code way faster. And every once in a while, there's a new platform and you want to have like a developer version of this thing come out or be revealed at least so that you can start coding and making apps for it they put lidar in the new iphone a while ago people have been working on ar stuff for apple for a while but i can see like a google glass explorer edition type of vibe thing happening at wwd. I should rephrase what I said then. I don't think there will be any announcement or product launch of a consumer-based model. I think you're seeing this as like when they first,

remember when they first announced Mac Pro and then it didn't come out for consumers for like a year and a half? They were announcing it and I'm sure developers were getting parts of it or some sort of something to start developing on it, even though that's OS, that's not like a whole different ecosystem.

But Apple's been doing AR stuff. They still have it in their phones. They have it in different things. It's being worked on. It just needs to be this new form factor, which I don't know how much of a difference in development it would need. I want to say the general aspects of ar and sensors and stuff like that are probably going to just be pretty similar to the iphone just in a in glasses

the screen aspect might be the hardest yeah there's all kinds of questions about form factor and like how you get batteries that small on your face but i i could see i could see them unveiling apple glasses coming this fall. Like this is like a one more thing moment. At WWDC. At WWDC. And this is me being super wishful thinking and setting the hype way too high, but let's do it anyway.

Apple goes, hey, one more thing. And then they show a little teaser. This is how it's going to go. They show a little teaser of a bunch of angles of something, and then it goes Apple AR glasses, $1,499. And everyone goes, whoa. And then Apple goes, but all of the stuff you've been shooting on your iPhone, which has had that LiDAR sensor, will now be able to be objects inside of your AR world. And we've worked with a couple developers behind the scenes who have been making apps for it. Let's have them come on stage and show their apps.

One or two or three come on stage, show their apps. Then they go, all of you developers, you can make your apps AR compatible with just a few lines of code. And they go, whoa, that's awesome. And then you'll have to wait. You know, you'll get the resources to convert your app to work with the UI,

but we'll have to wait a couple more months to actually get the actual glasses in our hands. That's how it'll go. Mark my thousand words. In 2022, that's how it'll go. Interesting. Okay. I don't know. I don't see that happening this year. I think we would have had a little more Apple still leaks, I think. On a different note, I do have a question for you about WWDC. So it is virtual again. We've gone through a whole year of virtual production. A lot of people are eager to get back to physical events. How does Apple go back? Do you think they just go back completely into their

normal physical in-person events or like now that they've created these like insane production quality virtual events, how do they potentially incorporate some of that into the live stream aspect of their in-person events? Because they're realizing they had 22 million people watching WWDC last in 2020. So how do they somehow bring that production quality into now a live stream that has a live audience and a physical thing where all of them can't quite see the crazy drone transitions through Apple Park? Or do you think they hit some middle ground between them or do you just think they go straight back to their well-produced in-person events where the live stream isn't as enthralling for people online? enthralling for people online? I think they essentially go right back, but probably have a couple of cool extra things that they've learned from these live presentations. I guess they could always transition between speakers as a transition that would just play up on a monitor there and on

the live stream would just take up the switch camera it's funny because they they have really nailed the whole keynote thing where one person walks off stage holding a remote and the next person walks on stage they hand them the remote and they go thank you and switch slides like that's a that's an apple presentation moment that we see everywhere now and i think they want to probably get back to but i don't know there's there's no reason why they have to go back. Do you know what would be cooler than passing that remote? What?

If you had a pair of wireless earbuds where you could change the PowerPoint presentation by sliding on your earbud. Sorry, we talked about those surface buds the other day and I still think that's one of the dumbest features of a product. I always wanted to tap my ear and change the slide. One more thing.

Xiaomi Mi Mix Fold didn't leak. Yeah, guys. Yeah, Xiaomi went on stage. They had an event. They unveiled a bunch of new versions of their phones. The Mi 11, Mi 11 Ultra, which I really want to get my hands on, seems like the everything spec phone and an awesome device. But also the Mi Mix Fold, which is a foldable.

And we talked about these devices near in the studio for a bit. And then we ended up just landing on, how did this not leak? That's awesome that we didn't actually see the Mi Mix Fold before it came out. And the thing about Mi Mix, first of all, is we've, remember the first Mi Mix, that was like one of the early bezel-less phones. And it had like the camera on the bottom, right? Camera in the chin, no top bezel. But then the next mi mix had like a pop-up top screen that like popped out of the top and the whole camera module is the top half yeah there's the point is that the mi mix has never really had any one form factor no it's always kind of been

like the revolutionary or like the new thing they're working on yeah hardware wise at least and to me that's both hard to follow but also really fun oh yeah like the fact that they've named it the me mix fold seems to suggest it's it's a sequel to previous me mixes but maybe it's just another one in the line i don't know it's the xiaomi try whatever you want phone um but yeah it's a foldable and i think the reason so this is my theory. Yeah, I liked this theory a lot. Yeah, the theory about tech that doesn't leak is the only real way that you can make and develop a piece of tech now that doesn't leak is if you do all of it behind closed doors

and do not start production. Because the second the supply chain goes international and there's all your suppliers involved and there's tons of wires being crossed and all sorts of ways for things to leak, then it's just going to get out there sooner or later. Some are more extreme than others, but that's how it happens. And so I thought back to Tesla Roadster when they rolled that thing out of the back of the truck a couple years ago. God, that was a long time ago. How was that live? It was, well, I wasn't there, but I imagine it was incredible to have that thing roll out and everyone go, literally not a single peep, not a single rumor, not a single hint of maybe Tesla's going to refresh this thing.

There's people flying drones over Tesla's parking lots now trying to find stuff. Yeah, that seems highly illegal. You can't actually make anything without it leaking now, but they kept that thing behind closed doors and they did not start production of anything other than the single roadster that they showed on stage. And that's how it was kept a secret. And so really, basically, if you're going to keep a secret in today's tech world, it needs to be an announcement before production starts,

which is, I guess, what happens with the Mi Mix here. And I guess what happened with Mac Pro and some other stuff like that. Even that kind of got leaked a little bit because it was talked about. But yeah, that's basically what I've learned is don't start. So what you're saying though ultimately is you don't think the Mi Mix Fold is like full-blown

or maybe now it's in production but you think it's like just ramping up now and most likely was not in production therefore I wouldn't expect it anytime really soon. Right. Or in limited quantities. Yeah. Yeah. I would, I would guess that they have announced it now and are going to start making it soon and selling it and shipping it a little bit later. Um, which is fine. I think, I think if it's not like a six month delay or anything wild, I think that's perfectly fine. If people can start to get it. I think that's

though interesting to look at. I think if you're seeing a product being announced that you've never heard of before and is crazy interesting and maybe like super, super revolutionary or like technologically advanced, think about if it hasn't been leaked, especially if it's by a big company, because it might not be as far along as you think then. And maybe I wouldn't hop on pre-orders right away. Yeah. That's always the thing. When a product gets announced, think for a second about whether you think they've made a bunch of them yet or not. This is very appropriate in the car world too. Like every time we talk about a new car that comes out where they're like, dang, Lucid said they're going to make a 1200 horsepower four-door sedan that weighs two tons, but also does a nine second quarter mile. And look, they did a drag race with one. It did the thing. Or even I can use Tesla as an example. Tesla rolled the thing out of a pickup truck and or a semi truck and said, look, here's the one that we made. It does the thing.

Before you put your money down, think about if that company you think can actually execute on this vision. Because it's really, really hard to make a hundred thousand of something. It's really, really easy, make 100,000 of something. It's really, really easy, relatively speaking, to make one. Yeah, I mean, yeah,

we've seen the Roadster delay. We're still wondering if parts of the Roadster are going to be real, like the yoke steering, or I guess that was more, well, we're wondering that now because of the Model S Plaid.

Yeah. So it's one of those red flags. I feel like we always give kind of red flags that I'm sure nobody listens to at all and just pre-orders wildly instead but we tried guys yeah just trying to give a heads up all right so i think that about wraps it up i think we learned a lot today about things not to do we're teaching podcast definitely stop ruining april fool's day number one don't make an entire social network based on a feature that could be copied maybe uh don't

start production of a thing that you want to announce before leaks happen and stop removing useful features from YouTube. There you go. That's been it. We'll see you guys next week. Take it easy. Waveform is produced by Adam Molina. We are partnered with studio 71 and our intro outro music was created by

Cameron Barlow.