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As originally published by David Sable on LinkedIn. Subscribe to the newsletter!

Clubhouse is booming and Twitter and Facebook have taken note and are chasing after it.

For those unfamiliar with this most recent (and hippest) of social media tools, allow me to borrow a description shared by the New York Times last month:

“[Clubhouse is a] social networking app that lets people gather in audio chat rooms to discuss various topics, whether it’s sports, wellness, art or why Bitcoin is headed to $87,000. Rooms are usually divided into two groups: those who are talking and those who are listening (participants can see a list of everyone who is in a conversation, and the numbers sometimes run into the thousands). Unlike Twitter, Clubhouse is a closed, hierarchical platform: A moderator oversees discussions and has the ability to let someone chime in or to kick out the unruly. In addition to the ‘clubs’ sorted by topic, two or more users can join together and start their own chat room.”

Audio-only programming has been on the rise with the ever-growing popularity of Podcasts and their commercialization, together with channel-like content aggregation.

Lest you think this new concept of audio was sprung upon us ex nihilo, allow me to deconstruct its creation and popularity.

It’s actually a fascinating study in de-evolution—and instructive in understanding how to play and conquer this seemingly new medium of engagement.

Let us go back a century, to November 1920, when the first commercial radio station emerged in Pittsburgh USA. Its inaugural broadcast, interestingly enough, was to report the results of the Presidential election between Harding and Cox.

Back to this narrative…

What was created for news and information, soon learned how to entertain and educate. Hatemongers like Father Coughlin became adept at spewing racist vitriol on radio, amassing 30 million listeners at his height in the 1930s—far more than most of the Twitter followers of his spiritual descendants today.

And then came WWII, when Winston Churchill taught the world just how powerful a positive force radio could be, as Franklin Roosevelt and others followed suit.

Radio was a commercial success, used by consumer brands and services to sell their wares. And when highways expanded, and the world took to the road, drive time radio became one of the most important communication channels of its time. Keep that in mind. Don’t lose the thought…you’ll see why in a few paragraphs.

Hold on to the following as well: what for my parents was an experience that needed a physical platform and a plug-in power source, became, for my generation, a statement of freedom and individuality as transistor radios, powered by batteries, proved an important lifestyle accessory, as DJs (the critical influencers of the day) told us what music was hot and who was doing what.

Then the Digital Age hit. The Internet, “immersive experiences,” (ask someone my age about listening at night with an earphone under your covers, if you want to know about subversive immersive), and of course, the everything-else-killer: video. After all, why just listen if you can watch?

But here is the thing…100 years ago, we started with radio and ended up streaming blockbuster movies onto screens in our homes. And now we are going from those screens back to radio. Contrary to what communications prophets of the late twentieth century may have believed, cinema and radio are complimentary, symbiotic, existing side-by-side as opposed to struggling against one another, and they have both been successful because of differing use cases.

Your smartphone is the super-evolved transistor radio of my youth—you carry it everywhere, it’s a lifestyle accessory, you can use hi-def headphones/AirPods (not like the single earbuds we once had), and yes, you can watch video, but you can also talk, interact, groove to music, shop, etc. And yet, audio, as in ‘radio,’ is still clearly an important and powerful part of its foundational DNA.

Drive time, so critical in my youth, has expanded with walking/ running/ shopping/ chilling/ commuting, making it a 24-hour on-demand opportunity that exponentially expands listener engagement.

And much like audiences in the UK discovered in 1924, when a local radio station began having people call in, “listeners enjoyed the novelty of hearing their own voices taking part.” So successful was it then, that the Post Office, who controlled the phone system, had to intervene as radio call-ins nearly shut down the entire grid. Sound familiar?

Why do I tell you all of this?

I don’t believe we will fully use or develop Clubhouse, or a platform like it if we don’t understand its true origins.

Better yet, think on this: in a world where we are so sure that everything has to be released at once, on-demand, when we want it, Clubhouse operates like old-fashioned radio broadcast.

You have to watch it in real-time. You must opt-in, listen before they let you talk, and—my favorite thing—the session ends at its advertised time.

Clubhouse, like podcasts and streaming radio, defies the DIGIBABBLE pundits at the same time it makes brilliant use of digital technology. To make it work, you really need to understand people and their motivations, not unlike 1924 England, updated for our digital world of today.

“The Era of Audio Creators Has Arrived,” a New York Times piece by Taylor Lorenz, tells the story of Clubhouse and the businesses it’s spawning—a good read to get grounded in where it’s all headed.

Yet, I can’t help but wonder, as I muse on the amazing past that brought us here, the following quote which concludes Lorenz’s article:

“Part of what we want to do is not just create a model of how audio can be transformed…but also make a push forward for creator-driven culture so that this culture isn’t being shaped by the platforms and technologists, but the artists and creatives and talent.”

I wonder what Winston Churchill would say to this, or the original radio jockeys who first reported on the Harding election, or the first listeners who participated in call-ins, or the brands that built their businesses…or the on-air theaters and concerts that once invaded people’s imaginations with early audio…

Ex nihilo? Don’t think so.

Arrived? More like finally returned.

Although Thomas Edison believed that, “the radio craze will die out in time,” Hallie Flanagan, a theatrical producer, director, playwright, and visionary once said…Listen:

“The power of radio is not that it speaks to millions, but that it speaks intimately and privately to each one of those millions.”

Kudos to the founders of Clubhouse for tapping into this truth. A word to the wise: let the DIGIBABBLE Brigade think they created audio, get your hands on some of the most creative work ever done, even if it was so last century, and beat them to the punch.

What do you think?

P.S. a little gift for all…

As originally published by David Sable on Linkedin. Subscribe to the newsletter!

The digital divide seems to be getting bigger and bigger. Worse, it has created so many worrying faults that it’s starting to look like one of those disaster movies starring The Rock.

First, we have the digital economic divide. Then there is the digital racial divide. And, finally, The Plague has brought into renewed focus the digital age divide. While I could create a powerful Venn diagram of the three digital divides, as they all intersect on one plane or another, each is problematic on their own as well.

One of the issues in looking at the digital age divide is that for many, 70 is the new 50 and onwards. As the population ages, what constitutes old? Honestly, I used to think that 65 was ancient, and now that I’ve passed that age, I don’t see “elderly” anywhere in sight.

Many older adults (and here I’m talking 80+), have solid digital skills, if for no other reason than that it gives them access to their children and grandchildren. So, while they may not be able to create immersive digital experiences, they are adept at email, messaging, FaceTime and Facebook.

The truth is, of course, that even with non-smartphone capabilities, including basic text messaging, older adults can connect to their loved ones and critical services, and are no worse off than many in the developing world…with one key, and sadly, defining exception.

In the developing world, there is a focus on “work arounds,” or simple hacks that use “dumb” tech to solve problems. All of our admired (but often loathed) so-called Tech Giants (Facebook, Google etc.) have created solutions using SMS and basic phones, even as they continue to experiment with more sophisticated tech, launching balloons, drones and satellites to provide broadband—and to stir up FOMO amongst potential users.

In many developed countries, the age divide is less a symptomatic lack of wide broadband coverage, access to electric power sources or money for hardware, than it is a matter of, “I just don’t have the energy or intuitive knowledge to battle my way through screen after screen of crashing and contradictory user interface.”

The young use tricks of the digital trade, while the old spend hours waiting for spinning circles to still themselves.

While plenty of seniors have access to better tech, they simply don’t have the wherewithal or skillset to use it to its fullest. And by the way, this goes for public messaging and broadcasts as well. So many campaigns aren’t seen by the “old” demographic, as they are not utilizing the channels that purport to reach them.

The digital divide, then, as far as the oldest cohort of our audience is concerned, is more about UI, the simplicity of completion, than it is about lack of access to tech.

Bottom line, the people who need access to certain online platforms the most, say, websites to sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine, have the hardest time finding, navigating and engaging with the pathways that will get them there.

I don’t believe I’m overstating here when I say that it’s an issue that can have tragic consequences. Shame on us.

With all the money we invest in development and “disruption,” with all the time we devote to getting pizza delivered more quickly (my readers know my feelings on this), with all the brainpower we invest in providing yet another way for corporate teams to collaborate online (don’t get me started on this one), how is it that we haven’t provided a simple solution for those who desperately need the vaccine but cannot figure out how to get it?

We have become so jaded by our own tech skills and our ability to make everything more sophisticated (read: complex), that we have lost the drive to make the complex simple. And nothing, going forward, could be more important.

There are many huge systematic faults in the digital divide that will require retooling of much more than tech to fix. But the digital age divide can be bridged by purposeful thinking and empathetic ingenuity. It is not that older people are too senile or deficient to use digital resources and other tech, but rather, we, the younger folks, have failed to create a system that people of all ages can operate and navigate.

Listen to the amazing Frances McDormand:

“I think that ageism is a cultural illness; it’s not a personal illness”

And there you have it. Fix the culture, close the divide.