> There is no better way to build a mobile app than a native app.
Clubhouse (a native app) said the same thing years ago and ended up becoming irrelevant and its features were absorbed and overtaken by Discord (a React Native app) with its Stage Channels feature, all before Clubhouse could build it's Android app.
By the time Clubhouse released its Android app, their lunch was already eaten and it was too late. It turns out that, after recently looking at their latest app build they are slowly integrating React Native in their app.
This sounds like a quiet way of them admitting that they should have used React Native in the first place for both iOS and Android to release quicker had they done that as I said before. [0]
From the moment I heard of it, Clubhouse looked like a fad which would die as fast as it rose.
I’m not convinced their choice of technology was their downfall. On the contrary, maybe it was what allowed them to launch at the right time with the right experience and have a meteoric rise. Building it with the alternative might’ve meant obscurity from the start. Timing and luck are major influences in an app’s success.
I wonder why clubhouse didn't just sell to the highest bidder. Their product wasn't so complex and the user's weren't very locked in. It just didn't seem like a product/company that could succeed on its own.
You could say the same about loads of successful companies. Nobody really knows and hindsight is always perfectly clear what the owners should have done. People said the same about Dropbox and Google at various points and arguably if Google had executed well you’d be saying the same about Dropbox and if Yahoo! had a clue how to leverage their search dominance Google could have also looked stupid for not selling.
> I wonder why clubhouse didn't just sell to the highest bidder. Their product wasn't so complex and the user's weren't very locked in.
Yup. They did try to sell to Twitter [0] but that collapsed and Twitter already implemented Clubhouses features using Periscope's infrastructure which I said this before [1] the reports of their acquisition talks happened such as [0] and [2].
So due to Twitter already owning and using Periscope, the avenue for Clubhouse to sell to Twitter already made no sense.
Clubhouse was a great idea and was mostly about the celebs not the tech. But the UX was good. It was kind of like a curated citizens band. Not sure why it failed. I personally got fed up of being the “beta in the room” not allowed to speak for the
most part as the inner circles ran their rooms. Except the
room about chronic illness which was a good room.
For me it was interesting in the beginning but after a couple of weeks my Clubhouse experience was flooded by people that were on Clubhouse trying to promote themselves or their products, without providing any value in the conversations. I stopped visiting Clubhouse because of this.
I know that other people had different experiences, and that my experience is not universal. But I am probably not alone in that experience either.
"Greed" is a little presumptuous, but, to answer the mechanics part of your question: Assuming their audience and valuation would continue to grow instead of falter.
Clubhouse (a native app) said the same thing years ago and ended up becoming irrelevant and its features were absorbed and overtaken by Discord (a React Native app) with its Stage Channels feature, all before Clubhouse could build it's Android app.
By the time Clubhouse released its Android app, their lunch was already eaten and it was too late. It turns out that, after recently looking at their latest app build they are slowly integrating React Native in their app.
This sounds like a quiet way of them admitting that they should have used React Native in the first place for both iOS and Android to release quicker had they done that as I said before. [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28478951