š” Nowruz on Clubhouse
Pulse #129 ā Community and the competitive advantage on real-time audio-only platforms
Happy Nowruz! š
Todayās the first day of Spring; the first they of the year ā the Persian New Year. So, a big happy new year to everyone who celebrates it around the world.
While Iām writing this, thereās a Nowruz party happening on Clubhouse with over 7k users in a āroomā with Paul (Clubhouse co-founder) and many other fantastic guests. To me, this is a signal; another signal of the importance of voice as a medium.
Iām fascinated by whatās happening on Clubhouse; so much that Iām spending a lot of my time building a community Iād stopped serving, people who speak my mother-tongue ā Persian/Farsi, just because creating written content in Farsi doesnāt come naturally to me; but voice makes things so easy; and with its being real-time, it canāt be photoshopped and filtered; it shows your knowledge a lot easier and that gives you a competitive advantage like no other platform.
Iām super excited for Clubhouse ā and real-time audio-only platforms, and I think it can [sort of] promote meritocracy.
News
Twitter turns 15 today [link]
Apple ordered to pay $308.5 million after jury finds it infringed on digital rights management patent [link] and Brazil regulator fines Apple $2 million for not including chargers with iPhone 12 [link]
Zuckerberg on Clubhouse [link], Chinaās Telsa crackdown, and $6.5M fine for Coinbase [link]
Facebookās neural wristband, Sonyās VR controllers, and another brick on the NFT wall [link]
No Galaxy Note this year, but faster iPad Pros [link]
Google follows Apple, Uber workers, and Instagramās new limitations [link]
Telegramās debt, crypto ban in India, and Signal ban in China [link]
Apple goes mini, Stripeās latest round, and a class action suit against Google [link]
šØāāļøš³Ā a gift for you.
Worth Your Attention
Iām not gonna even try to summarise Ben Thompsonās latest post on Stratechery on the Webās Missing Interoperability. Just go read it.
Chart of the Week
Spotify is more transparent about artistsā earnings
Many musicians are quite unhappy with Spotify as they believe that the platform undervalues their work and deserves to be paid more. To address that - sort of - Spotify introduced a new website called Loud & Clear to offer more insights into how much the platform pays the artists.
Learn more on the Verge.
& more stats
Edison Research on US podcast listening [link]
The Simpsons airs its 700th episode Sunday evening. It would take another 12 years for the show to hit 1,000 [link]
Nearly 60% of global app store downloads now come from search [link]
How old are the tech companies? [link]
The average mobile game file size on the App Store in the United States has increased by 76 per cent since 2016 [link]
Twitter at 15 ā no match for Facebook at the same age [link]
Tools & Apps
SocialSizes: Image and Video sizes for Social Media with templates for Sketch, Figma, XD, Photoshop & Illustrator.
Canvas: Create beautiful 3D models of real-world spaces and convert them to CAD (requires LiDAR - iPhone 12/iPad Pro 2020) [iOS]
First 1000: Case studies on how companies got their first 1000 customers
Banners: 90 Eye-catching website banners in Figma
Hypernotes: Create, share, and understand knowledge in a new way [iOS | Android]
Spotted
Facebook keeps working on Audio rooms [link]
Facebook Messenger is working on the Groups tab [link]
Facebook is working on a redesigned Settings screen [link]
Instagram is working on the possibility of changing the background when uploading a clip in landscape [link]
Instagram is working on the possibility of creating polls in groups [link]
Instagram is working to allow you to add pronouns to your profile [link]
Twitter is working on app subscription for paid features like āUndo Tweetā [link]
Twitter is working on various new designs for the top story in Explore [link]
Twitter is working on a āMute Speakersā button for Twitter Spaces that mutes all speakers in the space [link]
TikTok is working on video playlists [link]
TikTok is working on "Auto captions" to improve accessibility [link]
š¦ Tweets of the Week
Fun Stuff
and now weāre done for this week
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