The core "problem" with live audio is that you are drinking straight from the source of information as it is produced. With Quora, there is a ton of drivel or even spam, but that useless content sits around for a while and gets filtered out by some combination of moderation, voting, and search rankings. In contrast, with Clubhouse, you are instead highly reliant on personalities who are building reputation by having a high signal to noise ratio, which doesn't scale once the whole world is involved.
Additionally, the high-value people on the platform are themselves often there because of the other high-value people. If most of the rooms you go to speak in are just filled with a thousand fans, maybe you'd be better off using that tile to talk to your half a million followers on Twitter or Instagram. The experience of a small private club simply doesn't scale.
> you are instead highly reliant on personalities who are building reputation by having a high signal to noise ratio, which doesn't scale once the whole world is involved.
The major problem with any internet community, even moderated ones. It's just too much text, too many people, and no real conversations occur.
You could even see it decades ago on IRC servers, which solidifies my view that it's a fundamental social limitation not a technology problem. Groups always split from the #general channels into their own smaller cliques because once a server grew large enough, even a moderated #general was impossible to communicate in.
Too many people in one space is just not conducive to conversation and you also no longer get the self-moderation of pseudo social connections. Since there's no real conversations occurring in #general/any busy chat, it's just lots of, there's less need for people to care about what they say in regards to it's implication on others.
The absolute extreme of this phenomenon is a busy twitch chat, which is a sight to behold.
Additionally, the high-value people on the platform are themselves often there because of the other high-value people. If most of the rooms you go to speak in are just filled with a thousand fans, maybe you'd be better off using that tile to talk to your half a million followers on Twitter or Instagram. The experience of a small private club simply doesn't scale.