ClubHouse has been the generator of profound experiences for me.

Day before yesterday, I got to take part in a session with the discoverer of 2014 UN271 with a physicist and an ex-JPLer. It took some wrangling to get everyone together, but the conversation was stimulating. We touched on the possible origin of the object, improving the algorithms, the discovery process for making a groundbreaking find etc.

While we were having our discussion, a very senior NASA official stopped by. After listening for some time, the official came up on stage. We ended up discussing the possibility of a mission to capture samples in aerogel for this object like NASA's Stardust project. We have about a decade before it reaches its perihelion, so we have some time to figure out what to shoot at it to get as many samples as we can.

It felt awe inspiring to sit there and watch people connect. And actually talk about something that matters with people who can do something about it.

I have no doubt that as ClubHouse grows, these moments will become rarer. There's already change in the air. The community is responding organically. The vast majority of rooms on CH aren't public. Most of the interesting rooms in my "hallway" are private and amongst busy people leading active intellectual lives who are seeking to connect in the least obtrusive way possible.

Furthermore, ClubHouse usage seems to be highly network dependent. There are some people for whom it is incredibly sticky. There are others for whom it just doesn't stick. However, I've noticed that despite Twitter Spaces, Greenroom etc. more people seem to have been sticking with ClubHouse than other platforms. And I suspect that's because of the very subtle + clever product decisions the ClubHouse team has made.

For e.g., Spotify's Greenroom has a "gems" systems, and the platform quickly devolved into people giving each other "gems" for being on stage etc. I suspect this is meant for monetization later on. But it made the conversations feel less organic. And the app seems to be a mild ghost town now. (as you can't make rooms privately, when I last checked - and you had to do it under a public topic, I couldn't find any activity on there).

Twitter's Spaces also has similar issues with retention, though the cause there is more complicated. We explored it more heavily, and it wasn't sticky in the same way ClubHouse was.

There is usually a reason why these things get valued at absurd amounts. Some of it is the broader asset bubble. A lot of it is irrational exuberance. But there has to be something to be exuberant about.

Few people believe me when I tell them this, but if you're the right kind of person, there's something here. The people who love this thing love it a lot. And the experiences it produces are magic.

I got to do a discussion with someone who worked in the early new space industry, in the early '00s, right after Virgin Galactic's flight. His friends died to make new space a reality. And it was one of the most moving things I've experienced. I cried when he talked about their sacrifice. And how it was a step towards a better future for all humankind.

However, at the same time, the company has made many missteps. Discovery sucks. My talk with the discoverer of the largest comet ever found, the senior NASA official, and a bunch of very well informed physicists and space nerds barely cracked 30 listeners. Other times, a topic might skyrocket and end up getting 400+. The application succeeds in creating interesting experiences. But it fails to surface them. A lot of manual tuning is required.

The end of the invite-only system was short-sighted. It gave ClubHouse the unique ability to nuke trolls, fake accounts, and their enablers by looking at the social graph of who invited whom. They seem to have given this up in exchange for rapid growth.