Hi, guys.

Kate Keller, Melbourne, Australia and I'm trying something a bit different. I'm gonna start with some sounds for my maono AM 100 soundboard.

We're up. We're playing around with what Twitter spaces can do.

This is buy me a coffee Monday.

And this is just the warm up session. I'll probably edit this part out in a few minutes and once the show is finished, I'll I'll go and edit these first couple of minutes out at least. What we're going to do today is we're going to talk about which social audio sites will be best for networking in 2023. Of course we all hope that Twitter spaces will survive and that's my hope as well.

But I'm just preparing in case they don't.

So we're going to talk about quite a few other sites. We're going to talk about LinkedIn. It has a very robust feature. We going to talk about discord, which I've only just started using, but I love it.

We're gonna talk about wisdom, which is an app which only works on your phone and has some uses. I personally don't like it, but it's very popular. And we're also going to talk about clubhouse, which is arguably the one that started this sort of social audio movement. Of course, there were other sites before it, but Clubhouse was one of the more popular ones.

No one in the.

No one in the room yet.

So I'll I'll just play a little bit of music while I warm up the room, get some tweets going, and I'll get some people in to have a chat.

This is always the hardest part of the Twitter spaces concept. The first few minutes are always a little bit of dead air while we're waiting for people to come in. I've started early, which I guess is my fault, but the show itself will start in about 20 minutes. But I always like to go in a bit earlier and warm up the room and put some tweets in the nest. Play around with my levels, get some guests in to get a bit of a sound cheque going before the show sounds proper. The show starts properly an

This is a little bit of a preamble, which is always a bit of fun to do, but.

The main idea between behind today show is which social audio sites will you be using in New Year in 2023. Of course Twitter is here and we're on Twitter and if Twitter survives we will most likely be here with it and it will survive. I'm guessing. But there's there's other choices and one of those choices is LinkedIn, another one is discord, another one is wisdom and another one is clubhouse. And we'll talk about these.

Right length. I've got several. Um.

Really lovely.

Twitter polls I want to start with I'm actually going to start with my first Twitter poll, which is what site do you like to create content on? This will actually help me decide where to focus the initial part of the show while we're warming up the room.

What? What?

What site do you like to create your content on bring? I'll bring you in Sherry and we'll have a bit of a chat about that.

So I've I've started a a little Twitter poll.

Say well, OK, what? What do you want your your your audio to look like? Do you create it on your phone? Do you create it on your?

Tablet. Do you create it on your desktop or your laptop? How do you create content for the web? Sherry? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Sorry, I'm just tuning in properly now. Um, can you repeat that question please?

Yeah, I'm. I'm putting a a Twitter poll in the nest because what I'm going to do today is I'm going to talk about my top five.

To a social audio sites in in the you know the worst case scenario.

Of that, Twitter spaces may go away.

Or most likely stop working. I've created a bit of a list. I've got 10 on the list which I might get to overtime, but I'd love to know how you create content because that will help frame the conversation. What devices do you prefer to use?

I do use my phone, the mouse. That's the same as when I write my poetry laptop. Sometimes if I do something serious, then I go to the laptop. But yeah, the phone I used the most.

Yeah, well this is actually very important. Let's let's assume that's the case because here on the on the app it sells, it says 41% of people prefer to create content on their phone. And what that means is if Twitter goes away, Twitter spaces, you have all the choices.

You can. You can. You can use LinkedIn on your phone.

You can use clubhouse on your phone. You can use discord on your phone. You can use wisdom on your phone. Have you tried any of these other ones other than Twitter spaces for the people that haven't heard what you're doing? I think I know the answer, but have you tried any of the others?

Yeah, I always use my phone for a clubhouse before and.

I actually I haven't figured out how to use the laptop for these things because I I believe you have to download different apps like yeah the deck.

That's a tough thing.

OK.

Yeah, that that I'll bring Brent in on this as well. But the the main reason I'm asking this question.

Is if you prefer your phone.

Then you've got all the choices.

Would LinkedIn, clubhouse, wisdom, discord they all work on your phone but.

Everything works really well on your phone if you put on your laptop or your PC. So for instance discord. It does work on your on your phone, but it's not optimised for your phone. It's really hard to create content there. You can participate as a member, as a guest, as a listener, but it's very very difficult to create content there. It's not impossible, but it's very difficult and with wisdom and clubhouse it's actually impossible to create content there.

By yourself on the laptop or PC. But Clubhouse does have a unofficial app which is not that good.

Called club deck.

Dot com.

It's not owned by Club clubhouse. It was a run, it was a runaway product by someone else. And it's a it's OK, it's a bit clumsy, it's not great.

And you can always use BlueStacks which is another app you can use on your Android or on your.

Windows PCs and laptops, it's not awesome. It's not optimised for that. I've tried it. I don't like it. So if you if you're using your phone for all your content, you'll have all the choices. You can choose any one of those five that I've mentioned.

And they'll all work on your phone.

And this is important for two reasons for you specifically. One is Twitter spaces. In my opinion, it's 2022. They'll never sound good.

I I don't ever believe, and I'm entitled to this opinion. It's just my opinion. Of course, I don't ever believe that Twitter spaces will sound good. I don't think they're ever gonna get around to making them stereo or compete with clubhouse or wisdom or even LinkedIn. And that's important to you because you played these really lovely concerts on your piano. So it's very important that we have this discussion about other choices for you. What do you think you might try in the new year?

Other than Twitter, if, if, if we have to get this sound right for you, what have you tried?

Well, I did come from clubhouse, which had a lot better sound quality than to his face.

So it's a bit of a downgrade coming here, but anyway I've just returned recently and so I suppose if I'm multicasting that would be a choice. And also I've tried multi streaming live streaming on YouTube so that's another option.

System I'm not.

I I think I I think I understand why you're having so much trouble multi streaming. If you wanna multi stream, I really think you've got to master the laptop.

That's what I suspected, but I really don't know how to actually do it very well with all the yeah.

Yeah. Well, let's let while we're waiting. While we're waiting for other people to come, I wanna hey, hey, Bez, I'll jump in here and there's actually, I'll just run with this thought with Sherry and then I'll bring you in.

We're actually starting the conversation today with the idea that we're actually gonna talk about five different sites, one of which is Twitter.

And it's all gonna it's all gonna revolve around this idea. What site?

What device do you prefer to use to create content? And Sherry and 42 other 42% of other people have said, you know what, I love my phone, I love using my phone. It's so convenient, it's so convenient, but we're actually, I'm just about to morph into a little discussion about.

He streaming. And I think, I think we've worked out why you're having so much trouble, Sherry.

Multistreaming is not really that.

Easy to do on your phone, but it's it's quite easy to do on your laptop.

So in this case if you if you want to use social audio to multi stream.

I personally recommend trying restroom and or streaming out. I've tried both.

I prefer stream yard myself, personally. It's slightly easier to use, only very slightly.

But Restream is optimised for stereo sound.

So restroom is only marginally different, more difficult.

Only very slightly. Same price points, about 50 bucks a month for the Pro plan, but about 20 bucks a month for the basic plan.

And you can restream up to two up to 30 places at once.

With you, you create one file on your laptop and then it sends the file to 30 other places for you.

But you'd need a laptop for that. So I've got restream. I'm very happy to run that experiment for you. I already have that over sort of a.

Grandfather.

Black Friday.

Special from last year $10.00 a month. Still it's still the but I've got the basic package.

So I'd be very, very happy to run that experiment, but my gut feeling for you, given that this is becoming a recurring theme.

You've gotta get master your laptop get restream out.

And take it for a run, I think you can run, you know, I think there's a 30 day free plan, I think maybe seven days anyway. I know the guys there we can get you, you know, we can get you a deal probably there's a deal going on right now for Cyber Monday I would think.

Might have expired by now but anyway I got I got restream last year for 10 bucks a month and and actually while we're there a tear what we'll do why don't we throw to bears. This is really good timing because Bez now users Riverside FM now Riverside FM might actually be the secret ingredient for you. I've never used it but best just got the Cyber Monday special. Can you tell us what you think about Riverside FM so far and do you think it'd suit.

I.

Shari's performance challenges.

Yeah, yeah.

I think so too. I I actually believe so. Um and just to let you stream yard does have a $9 an option Cyber Monday deal probably ends tonight. So you might want to cheque, cheque that out. But you know live streaming is that whole animal by itself and that's why I have a go XLR because that's what I was going to do initially but.

You know, I I think I'm gonna go more towards the podcast Slash social audio and then as a.

A byproduct folk, you know live stream that. So it's it's I'm gonna invert it.

Because I think it's just more intimate with audio, even a podcast I believe you're developing that, you know, intimacy and social audio is even a deeper relationship. It's hard on live streaming.

Two, unless you're working the chat very closely to have that interaction but live stream.

Here's the great way to broadcast a multi stream. It is just a different animal and you know, even though you can let let's say you get.

Yeah, yeah.

Greenyard or river or read stream, you gotta make sure. Usually there's a rule of thumb, you know it's like you you gotta have so the upload megabit speed is more important than the download, so.

So if you're gonna stream to multiple places, you probably just save around 7-8 megabits upload if you're streaming at 1080P, right? And you can.

What if you just streaming an audio? What if you're just streaming audio?

Uh, that would be different. And I don't know the technical requirements on that. Probably are way less right?

If you're just doing audio, but if you're doing video and audio.

On stream yard.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, yeah, it's, you know, you just sort of have to have some bandwidth and then even if you use like some of these services are good, they take one upload and then they're at their servers, they split the signal and go to multiple places. So that may save you some of that rule of thumb bandwidth. But anyways, I'm so just FYI, there's still a special going on. At least it looks it's not streaming.

But restream.

Yeah, and and.

Restream. OK. Yep. Well, Restream is very good. I I like restream. I've used it. It's a little bit, just a tad harder to use than stream and that's very similar forward, Holden, Pepsi, Coke, they're very similar.

Nope.

Yeah, but, but, but the hardcore live streamers, they they would they'll put an edge to restream. You know, they do, even though it's web-based and they may use other solutions like.

Yeah, I use xsplit. I use Expo.

Vmix or if you're on a Mac, Ecam, Ecam or xsplit, yeah.

Sherry, are you on a Mac or PC?

Well, if you're if you really just for live streaming, like um, usually the standard for PC, if you want to get one of the best is vmix, but you know they'll give you 60.

Day free trial, but it it is quite more an investment, you know, like the package I would invest would be in, but it's a one time fee. It's like I would do the $700.00 one and which I'm not ready to do now.

But um, and then they go up to 1200.

But the on the Mac side is ecam. They're the industry standard for like.

Beecham is fantastic, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, like real hard, like the streamers, streamers, they'll either use ecam or vmix, but then they'll use them in conjunction. If they want to do multiple, they they they'll use restream.

And it's free. And it's free.

You know, on certain aspects, um, and they'll use streamlabs and different they'll use a combination of and don't use OBS. And and what I'm hearing is OBS is getting really good and may be able to replace ecam or vmix. So you got to play around with it. Yeah it is free, it's open source, so it's gotten better and it's. But if you really want to learn, it's the gamers, you got to go.

Um.

A watch or people that really play in that space and you'll learn a lot from that. I can give you a couple leads whenever you're ready.

Uh.

It's a big area, Sherry, tell us, tell us where you are in that market. Have you got any of these? Like if you wanna multi stream, I know we keep saying this, you've gotta get your laptop out, you've got to get some tech. You can't do it on your phone. It's going to sound terrible. You've just got to go up a notch.

And and we we we'll we'll coach coach you through that you know.

I think you have to put away your phone, get your laptop out, get out that mixer, get it really firing up.

Yeah, I think it.

And we didn't really need to go up a notch.

Yeah, what I've been doing. And in the live streaming, I thought it looked a little bit messy because I was like trying to deal with my progress at the same time during concerts. And then that just looked messy. And maybe I I need to think about the editing some bits out. So I think if if it's just streaming from the laptop, if I'm not really interacting with my audience that much, which is actually what happens in a normal concert, I think, yeah, there's no loss for me just not using my phone.

The the the the great advantage of what you're doing there is that this will work really well with your role as well.

You're all 12 is purpose built to plug into a laptop.

I'm sure we can get that working.

What kind of laptop or hardware do you have? Is it PC or Mac?

OK.

I've got a PC. It's like a Windows surface.

OK.

The touch screen one one of the older kind.

OK, OK. And uh. And even sometimes if you have like an extra PC hanging around and maybe you put some better graphics card or or a motherboard that handles some of the.

Latest stuff like with good RAM and but there's a lot of ways you can build your own, you know, server PC if you want. But anyways I wanted to share you your original question about Riverside FM and I got in there last night and you know what I was surprised that all the places that they'll stream to.

Ah, tell us more. Tell us more.

Yes, yes. Uh. So let me go in there. Um, so I know. Uh, you can stream to.

Well, come on.

Let me see if it says um no, not here. So I know you can stream to YouTube, you can stream to LinkedIn, you can you can go to Twitter, you can go to Facebook, you can go to Twitch.

Um, I'm trying to find um.

Where where I was looking at it now see I'm so new to it. I'm trying to figure out how to use the dashboard but.

Yeah, those, those are the ones that.

I gotta come up with the top of my head, so let me keep looking at it and see if I can get to that place where.

I'd say what we're doing there, Sherry, we take one site, Riverside Dot FM.

For a monthly fee and they do all the hard work. You just you just find a way to get your piano to sound good on that site and they do the streaming. You just push a button and does it itself. It's unbelievable. Like Riverside, FM is optimised for sound. That's its main ingredient.

And damn.

It also does video.

And that might be, might be a it's something to look into Sherry because that might be the solution you're looking for. Are you more concerned with audio quality at this point?

Sorry, what? What do you mean? You mean like um, with the mics or?

Well, it is is since you play music, you're probably really more you're you're more interested in audio quality, right?

Yeah, but if I'm actually streaming then I have to also start considering liking and everything else to make the whole presentation look better. I have noticed that I didn't have the best lighting when I was streaming live streaming on YouTube.

Yeah.

Oh so you you're also interested in them in the video so I would I'm sort of excited about Riverside FM. I was more worried about the audio and I knew it had some type of video feature and streaming but I was surprised of all the places I could multi stream to and I can even do an RTP custom link. So that was now Indra was here last night and she knows.

More about it, but I'm just sort of starting to play around in it.

Yeah.

But I and they, I think they still have their special package right now for Cyber Monday. So they had a Black Friday and they extended it to I believe to today and.

I got it cheap for to be honest. I got it for.

Think 144 bucks for 12 months.

Go back.

That sounds pretty good. Um, what's difference between that and restraint, for example?

They're all very similar.

Like restream?

Riverside FM streaming out, they're all very similar. It's like Indian restaurants in your town.

He went down to Parnell, say, which is a little restaurant district in your town.

There'd be all these different restaurants on the street. They're all restaurants and they all. They all foods, all yummy.

But you just have. They're different. So my gut feeling is that Riverside FM is optimised for music.

Restream is optimised for video, with an emphasis on live music.

And stream yard is the sort of rock solid hardcore live streaming.

Thing that is a very good competitor and has slightly different features, but they're all the same. If you're really, really, really into this, I recommend ecam, but you have to have a Mac, so they're the four main players. Ecam for Mac, Riverside FM for sound.

Restream for concerts because it streams in stereo.

And um, stream yard. Because I mean, stream yard is just super simple to use plug and play. It's easy. It's the easiest one of the four of them.

Yeah.

So that's what it does. So they're all the same and they're all about the same price and you might just wanna have a look at them and just say, hey, I like the look of this or I might try this. Actually I can send you some what I just, you probably don't know this, but when in March 2020, when Melbourne went into lockdown for two years, I decided to run a show called live streaming decoder.com, which still exists. And I bought that URL and I tried all of the live streaming sites available at tha

I've got a I've got a show on each of them. If you want to go and have a look at what restream looks like, or what stream yard looks like or what ecam looks like, I don't think Riverside FM was there at that time. So this is brand new, but.

Does it? Does that help Sherry?

And.

They are definitely.

And one one thing I just my intake. I love your your take kids because they are all about the same, but I think they approach the the problem to this.

With a solution to the problem or or the the case business case is approached from a different standpoint. So I look at Riverside FM as.

An organisation that is approaching podcasting from a the from.

From the podcasting point of view and that hey, you got to interview a guest, so we gotta add video there and they've been able to and then and then they they do.

They do us. So each person actually it gets recorded to their device and then gets uploaded back to the.

To the Internet and there's other competitors like squad cast, you know that's similar to Riverside FM and then now Riverside FM has lets you live stream at the same point. So I don't know it looks from what I'm seeing that the quality can be up to 4K, but I don't know if a lot of people are actually have the capability to stream at 4K. I think that takes some.

Technical tweaking because people really don't.

There's going to be latency issues unless you have an optimised upload stream so but 1080P is good enough for video anyways.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're getting slightly off topic because we are actually talking about audio.

Well, I'm sorry.

Yeah, now we I I let that run because that there was no one in the room and and Sherri wanted to talk about.

Multi streaming and multi streaming video is not the topic that I know a lot about, but Riverside FM would be the closest thing that we could talk to in this context because it is optimised for sound. Really, really really good quality sound. What do you think, Billy? What do you want to just bring Billy in to talk about the main topic, and that is, I'm running a Twitter poll about this. What device do you prefer to write in your content on? This is really, really interesting because this will a

My top five discussions.

Of where to social audio, not necessarily podcasting. This idea of chatting in real-time.

Which is actually what RTMP real means. I didn't know this until yesterday. Real-time messaging protocol, that's what our RMTP means, if you ever hear that idea around. But what do you think, Billy? Where do you prefer to create your content? And other than Twitter, what do you think we could do in the new year if Twitter has trouble? We've had this discussion a couple of times, but it's it's a juicy one to have as the as we fold the year out.

Well creating content is is kind of a broad thing. I mean for me I'm you know as as a audio guy when it comes to podcasting I'm always gonna create that in a studio environment and and put that on podcast platforms. With that being said as far as social audio goes it right now anyway I'm I'm still OK with Twitter if it happens to make a move I've been giving discord because of you a a pretty serious look in my in my free time and I say.

Kind of loosely. I haven't had a whole lot of free time lately, but um.

Discord seems like a pretty good option.

I haven't had a chance to do a deep dive into fireside yet. I was accepted as a creator on fire fireside and they keep emailing me, wanting me to create some stuff on there. Um, that might be a pretty good option as well. Wisdom is kind of like in its own category. Wisdom to me is kind of like a a good tool.

To do a one-on-one interview, do a podcast or something of that nature. I don't know that it has the real time.

Like you were just talking about real-time social aspect to it because of the fact that it's one-on-one. So that's that's kind of the best answer I can give right now.

I love, I love what you've said that I love, love, love I love what you've said there. Let me just decode and So what we're starting the show with the general idea what's coming if Twitter spaces goes away. And I'm not proposing that it is. But if it if you wake up one day and you're used to using Twitter spaces and it stops working for some reason, the guy that's cutting it currently pedalling the bike gets the sack.

And because there's not many people there left.

You know if he gets the sack, or she gets the sack and there's no one in the room fixing stuff and it stops working, where to go next?

So what Billy said was very, very important.

Discord is a tremendous site. It's my favourite.

In fact, I think I even like it better than Twitter spaces. I think I'm definitely doing 1 show at least one show a month from January on Discord. Definitely, definitely definite.

LinkedIn is a very good a very very good alternative, but it doesn't record.

Wisdom, as Billy said, and I agree is a one-on-one interview style. I personally don't like it and I don't have the ability to sort of throw between guests and create these really rich conversations and really pisses me off to be honest. But it is a very robust system that records very well and clubhouse started it all back in March 2020. So that's what we're running with. What do you think, Don? I'd love to hear your thoughts. What are you, how do you create your content or how do you participa

Just on your phone or you got your laptop out sometime?

I got you there, Don. I think we got you on speaker. Can you speak?

I'll come back to you if you can.

What about Thomas? Thomas has been waiting very patiently. I'd love to hear your thoughts. What? What? Tell us what you're doing there and which sites do you? Which devices do you use to create content?

We've got you there.

You got you.

Yeah. So yeah, I should be able now.

Yeah, can you hear me now?

Got you. You got you there, got you there.

Yeah, that's great. So I have been my hosting the Twitter spaces serious about machine learning and also and also writing articles in the Brock. And I think at the end of the day the main questions like between like social audio, native platforms like clubhouse versus platforms like Twitter or social audios like just like a part of the offering. And I was wondering like how much it would matter in the long term basically because I mean.

Bingo. I think you've hit it, I think.

If if the social audio is not like the main like offering that it means that it can also become like second second class offering and I was basically wondering where Twitter would go now with that, with that, yeah now with the audio tap and basically podcasting.

If you've hit the nail on the head.

If Twitter spaces is just another thing that Twitter does, it's also something they could throw away at anytime, isn't it?

This is.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Or Duncan, they can just dip. They can. They can leave it still here, but make it so low priority that it doesn't matter anymore.

So what do you do? How do you do it? What? What have you got a Plan B for Twitter spaces if it does go away?

Well I mean I'm online discord also somebody mentioned before and and also as I would say I I do some like content on the block to make sure it like it's persistent. So like those are my like strategies.

Yeah, tell us what you had to use, how you use discord. Why do you love?

Well, I like this girl because they're like many different communities that are already there that I can join like network with people directly. And also there are like they're like some company company companies discourse that are like.

That are are just like very direct and this is something that I have been thinking about like building community versus just like social audio or anything else basically just like focusing on community and and also the nice thing about this is that it's pretty much like offers everything from like audio to video.

It is a one stop shop, isn't?

Yeah, it's pretty much just.

Though you didn't hear it from me first, I'm not gonna rant about discord. I love it and I can talk about it for hours, but I'm just gonna bounce off what Thomas was saying. The reason I love discord is because it is a one stop shop. You can do audio there, you can do video there. It works on your laptop, it works on your desktop, it works on your phone, it works on your tablet, works on your iPad. It works on any device you have, right? It's just a one stop shop. I love it. I know it's hard to

People, they're using it.

And 10 million, ten, 100 million pay 10 bucks, 10 bucks a month to use what they call Nitro.

So does this built-in community of people that are already using it.

And I love it. And I I can tell you for sure if anyone asks me what my Plan B is.

It's it's discord.

I'm going to be doing, definitely doing a show there once a month, definitely once a month, if not more. Maybe every second week.

And I'm going to really build this community out because I feel, I feel it straight away. My second backup is LinkedIn. We can talk about that at if anyone else in the room wants to talk about LinkedIn. Don, you've got some thoughts.

Yeah, I mean I I think you're right with discord, um, and it's a one stop shop and and the the thing I like about it the most is you can really.

The conversations can kind of carry on, you know, with the channels you can create separate channels. So you could have a a microphone channel and a a an interface channel. And so you know people can have ongoing conversations about those special topics. And then there can be a general channel, the voice channels, the video channels. So you can really kind of create a community and if if you and me want to nerd out over, you know some some.

Yeah.

Microphone that's come out or whatever. We can do that on the microphone channel. And the people talking about other things or having a discussion about other things don't need to see all this stuff about us talking about microphones if they're not interested and so.

Yeah.

Let me, let me pick up what you've just said there. This is really interesting. This is really interesting while we're going, because it is an alternative. Where will we be networking in 2023? I can tell you what. For me it will be discord, and I'll tell you why. With discord, you can have up to 250,000 members in your server, what they call a community.

250,000 people. If you ever wanna build that out, you you've got that robust structure to know that this is, this is really solid.

And inside those 250,000 people you can have what you've just described, 500 channels. You can have a microphone discussion channel where only people who want to talk about what microphone they want can do. We can have a multi streaming channel where people talk about only my multi streaming and why that's important. You'll know this if you're involved. In my group, DMS is sometimes people are talking about cookies and some bikkies biscuits.

Sometimes people are talking about tech and we're thinking, what are we talking about? Are we talking about mixers?

Are we talking about biscuits? Are we? Are we talking about going to the pub?

We are we talking about going to see a band? You know, the conversations are very loose and sometimes that's good, but they go off on a bit of a tangent. It's hard to keep up.

But with with, with discord.

You're a little bitch.

Who was that?

With with discord you can actually segment people into look, I really, really wanna pull apart this brand new device called the Tascam Mini Studio. Does anyone have one? I can't get it to work. Let's have a chat about that. Don got a little gadget today, can't get it to work. Must be someone else in the world that has one and who knows what all the buttons do. Let's have that chat. Don't talk to me about biscuits or meeting your family on the weekend or you know this and that, which is a great c

Having a different channel.

And This is why I love it. And if you go to my channel, which is global social audio community.

DM me if you want me to send you the link to that. I'm loving it. I know Michael loves discord. I'd love to hear your thoughts about why you love it. And for all those people in the audience that find it difficult, can you give us some decoders about how to make it less difficult?

Oh dude, like I'm not the person to ask about discord. I I know just you probably know more than I do about discord at this point. So I like that you can build a community there and and doing everything that you're saying, having different channels for different different things and different topics and subjects. You can boost the channel and people can have different roles and it's very versatile in building a community and and bringing people who are like minded or you know talking about it.

Particular subject matter, whatever together. Um. So yeah and and in that way it's it's really great that's.

Pretty much all I have to say about that right now, so.

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's that's all I have to say about that.

But I will. I will go on a bit about discord. It's cause it's one of my top five, but it's not the only one. And I want to honour the fact that not everyone understands it. And I'd love to hear from Christy about why you think it's a little bit challenging. I wanna hear this story. I want to hear why people because I find it so easy.

Like I find it so easy to use I could do it in my sleep. In fact, I do. I have dreams about.

And I could. I could. I could walk around the house in the middle of the night with all the lights off, and I could run discord, image armies.

But that's not going to be everyone's experience, so I'd love to hear your thoughts, Christy, about discord and what you'd prefer to use. What do you use if not Twitter? And can you, if you feel comfortable to share, can you tell us a little bit about what you think about discord?

Hey, everybody. I hope everyone's doing good tonight. Um, basically on discord. I haven't had a chance to really dig, you know, really dig deep into it. My life's been a little complicated this last month, but from when the times that I've been on discord. Excuse me, I'm still a little sick here. Everything. The times that I've been on discord, I get stuck on one page. And I don't know if that's because I need to upgrade my equipment because my phone is really old. My laptop's pretty old, but sa

Yeah.

I've been able to type chat with you a few times, but if I wanted to get onto a audio chat with you, I cannot leave the page that I'm on. I don't know if it's my equipment or what it is, and I know Maria has tried calling me through discord a few times, but I can't answer it when it comes through. I don't know what the issue is, so maybe you guys can walk me through that.

I love what no, I I can tell you. I can tell you exactly. And that's why I'm asking that question. So I know you've got a laptop that's not working that well, but when you create content or when you hang out on the Internet?

How much of that time do you hang out on your phone? And how much of that time do you hang out on your laptop? Because that will help you decide which site to focus on.

95% I'm on my phone for the most part. I do my podcast through my laptop. It just works a little bit better than my eye rig at the moment. I'm not quite sure on that one, I'll have to get into that later. But most of the time I'm on my phone and I do know I'm on a old Android device, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

Yeah, but bingo, we've hit it. We've hit it.

So the reason I'm I'm specifically asking this question is this is what I'm gonna recommend. It's in my opinion, I'm just one guy in the back of the house making a radio show. I'm just one person. But I have an opinion and that is that if you want to use your smartphone.

And you wanna back up to Twitter?

I would use wisdom or clubhouse.

Those sites are optimised for your phone.

As well as Twitter spices. But you know who long, who knows how long that's going to last. You know, I wake up everyday and it's always some better news about someone who's unhappy with Elon Musk. At the moment it's Tim Cook. So you know, Tim Cook and Elon Musk are fighting. I don't know who's winning that, but you know, Tim Cook has stopped advertising on Twitter. All of their marketing budget has been removed from Twitter. That's not a good thing. I don't know how many millions they were spend

Preparing, just in case. I woke up one morning.

Twitter spaces doesn't work, so if you if you love your phone and if you use your phone most of the time my gut feeling.

Is that is that try to build out your clubhouse room and build out your wisdom account, because that's something you'll probably be able to use pretty safely.

At a pinch, and I'm guessing that's right. Are you doing both of those? Are you building those out?

I'm actually on quite a few platforms. I'm on Instagram, Tik, T.O.K, wisdom. I'm pretty much everywhere, so I do have backups everywhere. However, I've kind of dropped wisdom a little bit. Wisdom just wasn't my thing. I I liked it at first. I used it as a journal, but I'm kind of devoting my time into pieces, yeah.

It's.

Kind of vibrant. Wow. You're not the only one. You're not the only one people are getting a bit sick of.

Yeah.

I've known people that are hardcore and that they're sick of it.

It's become so much. It's just the same people, and a lot of the times it's just complaints. Most of the time they're just a bunch of people complaining and I just can't get into wisdom as much as I used to. So I've kind of backed away from wisdom. If I were to go anywhere, I'd probably be clubhouse more than anything.

I do use LinkedIn here and there again. Lately though, my life's been a little hectic, so I haven't been diving deep into anything. At the moment. I really need to get back to my writing. That's where my bread and butter is. I am a writer. I use.

Me, I use Twitter spaces and stuff like that for social networking, but as far as my actual business goes, I need to get back behind my laptop and get back to writing because that's that's where I make my living from.

Yeah, we gotta we gotta get you a wish list to get you a new laptop, haven't we? While we're having that chat, why don't we bring Michael back to talk about clubhouse? Because he does know a lot about this. This is his jam tell can you tell us a little bit about why clubhouse Michael might be a very good alternative if Twitter spaces goes away?

Well, it's it's actually goes back to what you said earlier that you know, if Twitter spaces is just an extra feature on Twitter they could shut it off at anytime if it doesn't serve the overall business model clubhouse, that's what they do, that's their product is social audio and so they are all in on us having conversations and building friendships and building community with each other and they're funded pretty well for the next couple of years you know at least and then they're probably goi

O yeah, I think it's a really with the technology and what they're building and everything, it's a very, very viable solution for social audio in the future, definitely.

Love that and what? I'll bring in Maria because I know you love clubhouse, but I'd be interested to know your thoughts on wisdom cause several of our buddies have said they're sick of it.

Be interested in know your thoughts. But let's start there, because I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna grill you about discord. We've had that chat. I love it, and everyone knows that now. But what do you think about clubhouse Maria? Why do you think that's a good alternative if Twitter spaces goes away?

I think, hi everybody. Um, I think that if you're looking for a group conversation and you make friends over on clubhouse and you build your following that clubhouse, I think is is the best alternative I think to Twitter spaces. I like the way that I can repurpose the audio. I like the way that you can have people come up to the stage and.

It to me it feels very, very similar to Twitter spaces. The only reason I moved from clubhouse to Twitter spaces is because of the sheer volume of people that I could reach. More on Twitter spaces. Clubhouse I find a real issue with discoverability. I don't like the way that hallway works. I I rely on people I know to send me their links more so than like on Twitter spaces.

It's a little, it's a lot easier, I think the discoverability.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know you said that. I love that. I love that. So Clubhouse is a very, very good alternative if Twitter spaces goes away. But if if best case scenario of Twitter spaces was here to stay, you'd be here, right? You prefer it to clubhouse. We could do both equally.

I think I kind of prefer it to clubhouse, actually. I I I find out. I'm a little confused at their new use of the House system in addition to their club system. I it's it's still evolving, it's still evolving, but.

For social audio purposes, I find it a little, I don't know, a little more.

Fun over there in clubhouse, I think.

I'm not sure why.

Now this is, this is now, this is very important that we have this discussion because we do this all day.

Hmm.

Yeah.

And I do a show every Tuesday and I'm constantly researching things and I'm constantly pulling things apart. And this stuff so easy for me. But the other person that's listening to this replay might think, well, you know, I've been meaning to try clubhouse. I better go over there. And so my gut feeling is clubhouses are very good alternative to Twitter spaces. But the sheer volume of people, like there's several people in this call that I don't know, that just turned up.

Right.

It's not cool, they just turned up.

Yes, yes, yes, I like that.

And you don't, you're saying you don't get that with clubhouse?

Ah, yeah, OK.

Not as much. I think people are a little, um, maybe almost like more into their own self promo. There people will come in, in and out of a room on clubhouse much faster than they will in Twitter spaces. I feel like in Twitter spaces it seems like they hesitate a little more to give the room a chance and they'll listen to the personalities and the topic, whereas in clubhouse people will come in and immediately start raising their hand because they want to.

Self promo or start dropping icky stuff in the chat thing. Or if they raise their hand and I don't know them and let them U right away, they'll just leave and I can feel their anger. They're like frustrated. They're so yes.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're impatient. I'm here. I've been. I've been waiting 3 minutes. I've been waiting 3 minutes.

Yes. I don't know why that just I get that feeling on clubhouse more than I do here on Twitter.

Um, yeah.

Yeah, look up. Hold that thought. I want to come back to you about wisdom because I know you love it. Or you did. What do you think? And Thomas, jump in there. You got your hand up.

Ohhhhh, that's she's. That's an interesting insight.

Yeah, I was thinking that basically because clubhouse is my clubhouse at least like has the opportunity like have close chat or like close communities like like how they got it down houses pretty much. So I was thinking that in that regard clockhouse is similar to this, but just audio or I mean there is also like chat to some extent.

Yeah, but it's it's mainly audience like audio, discord pretty much at this point.

Let me pick up on this. This is a slight tangent. I'm going to come back to you about wisdom Maria, don't let me forget, but I'm going to pick up on what Thomas just said and I wanna throw to Michael on this houses.

It is.

Clubhouse houses is this brand new feature that clubhouses invented? Is it somewhat similar to a discord in that regard, Michael, is it, is it a lovely closed community where this is safety? Yeah. OK.

Yeah, so if you basically strip off the sort of social audio kind of components of discord, that's what houses are in clubhouse. You can spin up different conversations in a house with just that community that's that are members of the House. There is a house chat where people can leave messages, leave emojis, replies to those messages, leave text replies to those messages. So in a lot of ways it it feels a lot like a a sort of a miniature.

Pared down Discord channel in some ways, yeah.

Or you've got my attention now.

Of.

Only on mobile, right?

Still now desktop solution.

Well, officially, yes. Now club deck is the third party unofficial software that you can run clubhouse with, and it has houses available.

So, um, you know, I have hosted rooms in my house that I have over there and replied to things, left messages with club deck. So there is a desktop component, it's just not official.

Yeah. Do you know, do you know the restrictions on how many people can you have in a house? How do you have a house?

How do you set up a house?

Well, they've, they've been raising that. Um, it started off as 500. I believe right now the CAP is still 1000 people. They are letting maybe some houses go bigger than that, I think, I'm not sure. But right now I'm pretty sure it's at least 1000. People can be in one house at a time.

Let's assume that's the case, so this is great. We've got a discord server.

Which can have up to 250,000 people in there and it but it's big. It's a very techy thing. Several people in this call really dislike it. But with clubhouse houses can have up to 1000 people. And you can use your phone or you can use this little piece of tech called clubdeck.com. I just learned something there I'm pretty excited you might find.

Ah, club Dick Dot app.

Club Deck app is actually the website address klebeck app. Yeah.

So, um, I you might find me trying.

You've got my attention.

Yeah, I'm surprised you haven't. Yeah, I'm surprised you haven't, Keith, actually a lot of.

I believe I've already invited you into my audio lounge house, Keith, but I will double cheque and make sure that I have.

I want, I wanna share a story. I wanna share, wanna share a story about this. And then I'm going to bring you back, Maria, to talk about wisdom. So hold on. And then I'm going to bring beds in. The reason I don't like clubhouse at this time, you know, you might have twisted me. There is that. And I want to give this very good analogy. When I was very young, I learned to play rugby.

I physically had to learn the rules of rugby, which is not an Australian game. We talked about this a little bit yesterday but it's very relevant and you've passed the ball backwards.

When you run forwards and there's no kicking, virtually no kicking.

And I was quite good at rugby. I played on the wing and I got a few tries. That's what they call it when you get a touchdown. It's very similar to American football and I played the game and I was pretty good.

And you know, I used to represent my town.

And then someone says, well, you want to try this game called Aussie Rules because we lived on the border.

Of Victoria, which is an Aussie Rules state.

Where it was invented? Melbourne and this other state called NSW and when I was playing it I'm thinking I don't understand the rules.

What? You gotta kick the ball. What? What's that about?

You gotta catch it.

You gotta catch the ball, stop, kick the ball so that other someone else can kick it and catch it.

And it felt stupid to me.

And I had this thought recently because I'm really, really, really bad at Aussie rules, which means I can't really watch it and enjoy it because it's just seems like a stupid game because I learnt it second.

And I think what's happened is that I learnt Twitter spaces first. I got to learn all of the rules of Twitter spaces and I know where all the buttons are and what they do and what happens, and I'm very flexible input of spaces. When I went to clubhouse, I'm thinking everything's in the wrong spot.

You know, what do you mean I've got to kick it? I everything was wrong for me. Wrong compared to Twitter spaces.

And up until now there was not a sufficient, there was not a suspicious sufficient enticement.

To try it again.

I found discord, got it straight away. I've got LinkedIn, I love it. I've got Twitter spaces already. Well, there's three. Haven't got enough bandwidth to try new ones. I've tried wisdom and I really, really, really dislike it. Off the charts dislike it.

And that that's enough, I'll say about that. But so This is why I don't like clubhouse. Compared to Twitter spaces, everything's in the wrong spot.

I mean, I could probably relearn it, and I probably will.

But I think that's possibly what it is. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to go to Bez because he had his hand up, but then I'm gonna come back to Maria because I want to ask you about wisdom, but what do you think can best?

You got your hand up there. Let's jump in on that.

Well, just just real. Yeah, just real quick, wanted to riff on what Michael said. Yeah, we, I'm part of a admin moderator group that runs a four or 5000 member Rotary.

Clubhouse and we recently got a A house and a lot of the people didn't even know how to use it nice. And the way I explained it to them is think about it as your lounge you invite you know your close friends or family and and it's and you start develop the your your community or you handpick people. You're curating people right and you have.

Invites you can send out to them and um, and it's there's no recording in the house. It's it's like you could do a clubhouse room and then go hang out in the lounge afterwards. It's that ad hoc.

And like Michael said, you can leave chats and messages, but it's really good to just like have conversations and and clubhouse. And I don't know if they still have it, but back in the early days they had what they call social rooms, which would be your your friends and they'll just like everybody was. So another feature of houses is that you're, you're all in a room, there is no audience and stage. You're just.

Hanging out, talking so you don't have to request to be up on stage or nothing like that. You just have to unmute your mic and start talking. So and how it relates to clubhouse, I think clubhouse there there is a a similarity with that I just think.

Just depends where your audience is and and you know how do you want, you know what kind of what do you want to do with them I just think.

With Discord, there's a lot of cool and neat things you can do, but I do see a lot of value in the houses for clubhouse if you're curating very specific audiences or communities.

I love what you've said there. I love that because we're talking about five things in concert here in we're talking about five different variations. I still love Twitter spaces. I'm going to do a show here every weekend until my violin hits the water. If we use the Titanic analogy, and if it does stop working, I want to have a Plan B, but I'm not proposing that we need one. But I'm just deciding to hand out the life jackets just in case. So with that in mind, I want to go back to Maria.

Well.

Up to talk about wisdom. I then wanna move to Thomas and then Andrew. Sorry, Michael. So, Maria, what do you think about wisdom? Are you still in there? Do you love it? Because several people I know are sick of it now.

Um, if I'm very careful with how I use it. I like it if it's just me.

Recording a podcast episode, that's a solo cast. It works, it works well, and then it's saved there in the wisdom A for anybody. I don't see anybody listening on replays very much, though, anyway. But you know how I am. I don't mind going live. I don't mind doing things so that it's parked at a particular app, but I want to salvage my own content for my own purposes. That's why I'm using it so it works well when I'm solo casting, and it works well if I'm doing an interview.

God, it's been crushing. Has it been crushing?

As long as the A doesn't crash, right? O Timothy Hughes. Well, a couple of weeks ago I had Timothy Hughes on there for like half an hour with me after we did a YouTube live thing. I was just, you know, he was he really wanted to try wisdom. So I'm like, OK, come on over. We talked and it got lost. The recording.

Yeah, please, please.

So that was frustrating. I was really glad that that was not our official interview anyway. He's fun to talk to anyway, but what a pain. So it's not that reliable, I don't think. But can I go ahead and respond? I want to go back to clubhouse for a minute because because I just put something in the in the reply thing right before Bez was talking.

Which is so funny, exactly what he's saying in those houses. It's the lounge feature. Just like Bez was saying, you cannot record it and you cannot invite non members to it. So Keith, for a show like yours, you kind of thrive on the ability for people you don't know.

To get a glimpse of your show and want to stop in you. You want to meet new people. The house isn't meant for meeting new people.

Yeah, of course.

That's like Bez just said. You're very careful with who you invite. One of the houses that I'm in right now only has 50 members and she, in fact the leader of that house, is thinking of eliminating some of those people in the House because her vision is that everyone is collaborating. Everyone is working together and trying to do rooms that will help each other out with their clubs. But the club.

Is it a little bit like a group DM? Is it a little bit like a group DM?

I love this. I love this discussion because.

Yeah, yes, yes because the goal is to have the clubs thrive and get to non members and get the information or you know the awareness raising whatever you're talking about getting it to people you don't know. You can't do that from a house space. So it it wouldn't work that house thing would not work for your show I don't think you know. Yeah it's exactly it's that DM chat. You just want a few in there.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're great, Dane. So what I've done there.

Yeah, you. You go best.

You got this.

I want, I wonder, I wonder if discord real quick. I wonder if Clubhouse got the idea from discord for houses.

Which is great, it's probably they're all copying each other, but that then again, on discord I see a problem in discoverability. Finding people on discord seems like a problem.

Can you, can we rip a little bit on why you don't like it? I I know you you use your phone mostly, and discord's not really that great on your phone, but why don't you like it? I'm having trouble understanding why you don't like it because I love it.

I I just, I I can't find. I don't know. I haven't tried it very much. I just it seems cold. It just it does not seem very warm and friendly to me.

That's just me.

You know, yeah.

OK. Yeah, that's, that's that's a fair comment. That's a fair comment. Now what I've done while we're chatting, I'm going to go to Thomas and Michael here. But while we're chatting, I just, I set up a little Twitter poll, I set one up, we're going in real-time RTMP.

Real time messaging protocol. I've set up a little Twitter, a poll to say do you use clubhouse? You know and yes, no sometimes in what's clubhouse. And the reason I'm always put that little comical thing in is because I've also done one yesterday. What disc? What is discord? So 30% of my following users discord, 34% don't. That'll help me decide how much content I fill put in there and 14.

Percent of people say, you know what's discord. Never heard of it. So if my if my following, and that's obviously what I've got to base it on. If my following says, look, I don't use clubhouse mate, there's no point going there. I don't use it. Well, I probably won't go there because my following is mostly on Twitter. I'll also ask this question on LinkedIn.

And that's where I currently have my following and I'm just gonna go where they go.

That makes sense. I wanna chat to the people I already know and meet a couple of new people, but bring them back to you know, what we're doing. So please feel free to vote on either of those Twitter polls while we're waiting for your turn to speak. But I'll go back to Thomas, who had his hand up first, and then Michael.

And then we'll just keep the conversation flow and what are you thinking, Thomas?

Yeah, since uh, since lounge in the in the in the house was mentioned, I would like to say around that basically it has been like one of the most annoying, annoying features that I have seen. And the reason why is because it is because the lounge in the cloud House.

That's basically always like put you inside even if you don't want to, even if you have like audio permissions. Then taken away from couples and I have finding annoying and there is always because for example I am in the Streeter space and I can see what it's like chatted about in the clubhouse clubhouse room and the reason why is because.

And I would say in the clubhouse, the House, sorry. So I can go to to any clubhouse house now. And there is no, it's because if I go it hijacks my audio.

OK, Yep, that's it. That's a fair comment. So, um, I love what you've said there. It's very important that we have a very robust discussion about the five options. I'm hoping like hell that Twitter spaces exists this time next year, but I've got to be honest, I don't think it will be. I just don't have it in my heart to concede that it's going to be here next year. We're coming up to the 2nd anniversary. I'm not convinced we're going to get a third anniversary out of this particular spaces, but

For fun. So, um, I'm going to bring in Perry if she wants to speak. She's been a very good sort of advocate of what we're doing here. So I'd love to get to speak to you. But Michael was next, so jump in where you are. We've covered a lot of ground, but we're mainly talking about clubhouse, so jump in where you are.

Got you there, Michael.

Are you wanting me to, or are you wanting Perry?

Yeah. Yeah. Mike, Michael, no, Michael, jump in.

Yeah, so I I replied to the the tweet that Maria put out about recording in house rooms. Of course the dog wants to leave. Hold on just a second.

As soon as I decide to start talking, the dog got up and wanted to leave the room and I had to open the door. Sorry about that.

So yes, house rooms.

To clarify, cannot be recorded.

They are all what is considered a social room type of of room. So it's a little bit different than we're used to here. Where there is a stage, there is an audience. The moderator or the host can invite people to the stage.

And and you can't join the stage unless you are allowed onto the stage in a social room on clubhouse, you start off in the audience and you're just listening. There is an audience sort of, but at any point you can unmute your microphone and you will join the speaking area and then you can mute and unmute and so on. If you need to move yourself back down to the listening area, you can do that at anytime. So that is is a different type of thing and actually houses used to be called.

Social clubs before they change the name to houses. So, um, you can do social rooms in houses or in the main hallway, either one, but that's kind of how that works and.

You'll love this.

You can invite guests into a house. If you're in a room as a member, you can. I think maybe it's only moderators who can invite guests into the room. And when they show up in the room, they'll have a little ticket emoji on their on their profile picture so that you can see that they're not a member of the house. And those people can only see that room and interact with people in that room. They cannot see the House page. All the chats that you've been doing, they cannot start a room in the house

I love. I love.

Also, they may not they, they can't be a moderator. I'm not sure about that one, but it is a way to sort of, you know, if if we're all chatting and I we decide oh we need to bring somebody in or you want to bring a guest in for a guest, lecturer, conversation, wherever, you can do that. And they will not become a member of the House unless somebody who has the permission to do so, you know, invites them to do that. So hopefully that clears it up. I think houses are really great. Yeah.

I love what you said there. It's it's very similar to what I'm using discord for, very similar. And I'll tell you about this in a minute, but I want to just ask you, Michael, what you think might happen to Twitter? What's your gut feeling? It's hard to know, but are you are you sort of sensing that Twitter spaces are getting glitchier, people are having trouble with them, or are you just rolling with them as a plan because clubhouse is your is your master plan, isn't?

Yeah, I've kind of focused on clubhouse at this point. Um, just because I like everything that it offers technology wise and community wise. I still come here on spaces like I am right now and it seems to work OK so far. Gosh, I mean, if I were to look into my crystal ball, I would say that Twitter will probably keep some sort of audio conversation component to it. And a year from now it may not look like what Twitter spaces.

Currently is. It may be more of like a telegram kind of thing or a WhatsApp or one of those other sorts of really popular communication apps. So I guess we'll just have to wait and see what Elon wants to do with the whole thing. So yeah.

Yeah, the reason I asked that question, which is very important to me, is that, you know, I've rented a house.

You know I loved it. And then someone knocks on the door and says.

I'm so sorry, Keith, but we're selling the house.

You've got to move.

What do you mean on when I bought furniture? I've been here three years, I'm settled in. Going away next week. It's not very convenient.

Sorry, you know the rules if you're a renter.

You have no rights at all and you just have to move.

And that's happened to me twice. And now I own my own house. We own our own house, and so no one can knock on our door and kick us out.

That's exactly what I'm sort of where I'm at now. I just have this funny feeling that someone's gonna knock on the door and say, hey, sorry, we decided that Twitter spaces isn't that making any money and we're going to kill it off because we know review is going away next week.

Yeah.

Communities might go away. Periscope went away, Vine was killed off, fleets went away. So it's quite possible that we we do need to have that plan. BI just want to say a big hello to Rachel and I'd love you to speak. If you want to speak, put up your hand or we can just bring you in right now because you're a nice fresh voice to the conversation. Tell us where you are in the conversation and what do you want to say.

Well, thank you, Keith, and hi everybody. Hi Billy and Christy and Maria and Bez and Michael, so much great information here. You know, nobody can read a mind, right? So we don't know what's going to happen. From what I've heard kind of the Chitter chatter on the back end is that Elon Musk loves Twitter spaces because he likes to hold for, you know, hold court so that everybody can listen to his every word. So it might stay.

Because you know the toddler likes it.

Oh.

I think you're right.

Think you're.

Yeah, yeah. And honestly, there's so many other options, but trying to get your following into those options if they're not already there, like on discord or on clubhouse, it's going to be very, very difficult. So for me, I'm going to stick around. I have sponsors who pay for my advertising, for my spaces, and they're willing to continue paying. So I feel like.

Yeah.

Might I say this whole thing's gonna end. If it does, it does, and it's been great. And if it doesn't, then we keep doing it.

Yeah, I agree with you there. But sometimes it's good to just say, I mean, I I think I'm overthinking it. I I do think that, but I've had cases with blab.

And with heaps.

And with Periscope where I built a lot of collateral there.

And put a lot of my personal power there.

Yes.

And I was at a bit of a loss when these things closed down.

And I do feel somewhat of that. I think all of us feel very disappointed because we embraced spaces you at the very beginning, Keith, as well as you, Billy.

I came in a little bit later, maybe three or four, six months after that. But you know, we it was great for me it was a no brainer. Why would I go to clubhouse and start at zero when I have 100 and something, 1000 followers here, right? So it just didn't make any sense. And I think that's the struggle for so many of us is this is where we spend our time. This is where I get clients. I mean, you know, so it's hard to say goodbye the one thing I like.

About Twitter is that it's multifunctional, it does a lot of different things. Whereas if you're only on clubhouse, that's all you're doing there. That's it. And that feels kind of like a waste of time to me.

Yeah, well, I tell you, this is the exact reason why I love discord.

Hmm.

So the reason I love discord and please vote on this if you if you're using it, just yell out. If you want to join my discord server, I've got 25 members, only started last week. 25 of us have joined there. But I can have a chat, I can run an audio event, I can run a video event.

I can chat to my buddies, I can set up some sort of um.

And I'm just really finding it's so comprehensive, you know, like I love, I personally love the idea of like a shopping centre. I love to be able to go to Meijer. That's the shop we have here. I like to be able to go to Walmart and get a hamburger and get a coffee.

And get some CDs in one place.

I don't wanna go to a hamburger shop. I'm a vegetarian so that doesn't work. But you know, I don't wanna go to hamburger shop and then get back in the car and then go and get some CD's and then get back in the car and then go and get a shirt.

And then get back in the car and go out for dinner.

I love the idea of going to a shopping centre and having a coffee while we're waiting for our, you know, jeans to get taken up and then we go up and buy a CD or a DVD or Blu ray or whatever they have now.

We're just all doing Netflix, so I love this one stop shop thing. It's convenient for me.

And this is fundamentally why I probably haven't really embraced clubhouse, because it's really a bit of A1 trick pony. It. It does one thing really well. And that's OK if that's the one thing you want. But what if you want to chat to people or make it do a video chat or set up a little community? Sounds like they've got that feature now with houses, and they may build that out. But is that sort of what you're thinking too, Rachel? You like the idea of sort of going somewhere and having a bit of

Yeah, I mean, I think that's what appeals to so many people who are, they call us power users. It just means that that's primarily where we spend our time and interact and build and grow. And I always tell people from a from an SEO perspective.

You can't you except for YouTube, you're not going to get anything better when it comes to ranking because Twitter tweets are indexed by Google.

They're they're optimised, aren't they, for Google aren't.

Yeah, yeah. I mean for, for, just from that per for that purpose alone. I tell people unless that changes, which who knows if it will.

That's the biggest reason that I suggest that people stay on Twitter or even get on it at all, because they're going to put YouTube first because they own it, and then they're going.

Yeah.

Um, have tweets and tweets will go into building your ranking, which goes into building your expertise and.

Yeah.

Well, try try this experiment and try this experiment. Send three tweets today and then go and Google yourself.

Yeah.

You should be able to see.

Yep.

And the three tweet? That's the right there. The three tweets that you sent today are at the top of the page when you Google your name.

Right.

Unless you've got a very, very common name.

Right. And so and the difference is if I look up, let's say I look up you Keith Keller on Facebook, it will say Keith has a page click here, it won't give me all of that information like that. You know we haven't tweets. So I think just from that for that perspective it's worth sticking around.

Yeah, yeah. But I don't think anyone in this room is leaving Twitter. What we're worried about is that it will leave us.

Oh, totally. I mean, this whole past month has been incredibly disappointing and kind of funny.

Does anyone have any?

I mean, we have to fight in it, right?

Well.

Does anyone have any comments on the Tim Cook saga or does anyone have any perspective on that? From what I understand, Twitter Apple has decided to stop advertising on Twitter and May delete Twitter from the App Store. That's all I know. Does anyone have any perspective on that to share with the group? Does anyone want to put up their hand on and share what they think might happen best?

Well it it might be and this is just a perspective from a friend that works there. They are doing cutbacks so it could be just a cost cutting measures as Apple is trying to navigate the bear market. I I know that I have a friend who's a recruiter within Apple and they usually have about 2-3 hundred contract recruiters that.

You know, eventually they'll pick some of them to become permanent and all of those were laid off or or just, you know, basically let go, go back to their agency and they're doing a lot of different things from what I hear. So it could just be a normal business.

Action to like, yeah.

Like, I love that. I love that thought. That's a nice, that's a nice, a holistic way to look at it. It could just be general business.

Yeah, yeah, and.

Could be reading into it when there's nothing there.

And maybe Billy or TomTom Thomas has a different take on it, yeah.

Yeah, Billy. Billy had his hand up. What do you think, Billy? I'll bring you in in a minute. Tom, Thomas and also.

We'll see. I changed it.

Lost art? But what do you think, Billy? What do you think, Billy?

Well, of course this is complete speculation, but I would have to say that first of all, Bev's got some good points. A lot of companies are are cutting back on, on what they're doing.

This whole thing about the Twitter app being taken out of the App Store, I don't know how much of that is a serious consideration. I would have to say it's very unlikely. The amount of interaction and the amount of money that is on Twitter for any major phone company to say they're not going to carry. It really gives an advantage to your competitors. I, and I don't know that any of them are going to be in a big hurry to do that.

Other side of this too is now. This is a little far reaching at this time, but you and I talked yesterday about this. If if I was Apple I I would not be in a big hurry to pick a fight with Elon on this. Elon has probably the best infrastructure in outer space right now for instant communications.

And if he would come up with a phone and Internet?

Satellite phones are available and the technology that is in current smartphones is well understood. It would not be that difficult to come up with a phone that had instant Starlink service, so you wouldn't have any terrestrial boundaries. You don't want to have to be near a cell tower. You could be on top of a mountain somewhere and have Internet access. If he would pull something like that off, that would be a real.

Real game changer. I mean that would that would completely change the the marketplace. Right now Apple the the iPhone 14 is not doing that well. It's you know it's one of those things where how many times can you hear well it's got a better camera and it's you know it's it's a little faster processor and it's got more storage. How many times are you going to hear that something like what I just described would completely change the landscape of the smartphone market.

So I.

It's an exciting discussion to have. Let me, let me really drill down on this. Imagine if you could buy a phone that could work anywhere in the world on a mountain top in the Himalayas, in Tasmania, in Melbourne, because we have terrible, terrible, terrible Internet in Amarillo, TX. I've just got Christie's attention. So you know you've got this phone that's 50 megabytes a second.

In your pocket works anywhere in the world cause the satellites in the sky.

And I'd buy one of them. I mean, that would be my next phone. I can tell you for sure. I'll be lining up for one of them.

Well, it's great. Great use case. I'm surprised he hasn't made one yet.

Either.

You might be encouraged to, yeah.

So.

Yeah, well, here's the thing, that there's been rumours and when I see the iPhone 14, I mean it's, it's doing well. But in the broad context of what what those phones have done in the past, I know from what I read they, they cancelled some orders from their factory and change in China and I guess it was a substantial amount. I'm not sure if it was a half a million or a million or what it was. Bev might know more about that than I do.

But there's been rumours of a Tesla phone for a long time. This isn't necessarily something new. The tech community has been speculating about this ever since that satellite network started to get together and started to become very impressive. Uh, it was a factor in the, you know in what's going on right now in in the with the Russia war, a lot of the, you know the ground forces and all that have instant communications by utilising Starlink. So it it's.

Something that is very formidable. And like I said, I don't know how how quickly that could be put together. But I gotta say, if if I was in charge of Apple, I would not be, I would not be testing those waters. That's just not something that I would do because here again Bev probably knows more about this than I do. The vast majority of their income comes from the phones. I mean they make money on the computers and the tablets and everything, but it's the phones that drives that company and I I

To to to go fight on that hill, I'll put it that way.

Wow, what a great discussion to have. This is a slight slight sort of.

But.

Tangent, but I'm happy to run with it. Do you want to pick up on that Thomas or lost, lost art, or who wants to pick up on this idea?

Well, I mean, I I own that.

You are gone.

Yeah. Yeah. So actually, um, go ahead, Thomas, you and having your hand up. Go ahead.

Yeah, I, I, I I wanted to add that basically one of the issues with Twitter is that generally content has like quite, quite a short time of living. Like it's short life span. So I mean there is the option like pin, pin that way, but it's only like one tweet. So I was basically thinking that yeah, it's indexed but at the end of the day Twitter is like very real time and and this is also something why you may consider using something else that has also like longer lifespan than like 50 minutes of

Hello, Keith, we can't hear you.

Yeah, that was me.

Is it me or I can't hear?

That.

Somebody talking, Keith?

I can't.

I can hear you, Bez.

I can't hear either.

Yeah, can't hear him.

Maybe.

A moment of silence.

Oh, we thought you accidentally went to discord.

Sorry about that. Just to just.

Attending to something personal, but.

Yeah, just keep the conversation going. This is a very, very, very robust discussion because like the conversation about renting a house, I have put a line in the sand to say I will never, ever.

Ever again put so much faith in one side ever again.

And I'll probably link too far into Twitter, and I'm a bit embarrassed about that. And so I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to spread my wings a bit.

Not too far, maybe two or three sites and and it's very important that we have this discussion. You've got some thoughts on that, Rachel.

Yeah, I've, you know, part of me felt a little bit of that disappointment as well, Keith. But one of the things that I've always done myself and also taught the authors that I work with to create a newsletter and build your own subscriber list because that is ours. Nobody can take that away from us. So one of the things I did was I took my review subscribers because, you know, that's gone now and I imported.

Into my newsletter because they'd already gone through the process, so you know it's worth continuing to grow your own subscribers regardless of where you end up spending time. Just wanted to add that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Can you can? No. I love this. Tell us. Tell us. This is very, very important and a very good example of what we're talking about. Review Twitter's, Twitter's newsletter service has finished and has it gone or is it finishing?

Uh, no, it's it's gone. I don't, as far as I can tell. I don't know if anybody else has an update. I went once. I heard that they it was axed. I took it off of both of my I have two verified accounts. I.

Yeah.

Like what do they call it? OG verified accounts and um I removed the newsletter option through the professional. If you if you take your existing account and click on the professional dashboard you can create a professional account and then it gives you options. Do you want to show your community? Which again I hope it still sticks around or you can even create a shop now and you can you can sell stuff in your shop and that will show.

But one of the options was review.

Yeah, right. And that's not there anymore. It's gone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this is a very good example of what I'm talking about. Review goes away. Communities are still here, circles are still here, spaces are still here for now 2022. But can you, can you tell people in the audience who didn't know about this how you transferred your newsletter leased to somewhere else? How did you do that? I'm very interested in how you did that.

Ohm it just gives you an option. Do you want to import your list and so you just say yes and then when it's done they email it to you and then you take that import. It's it's usually in a what do you call that Excel file. Sorry. And you can just upload that into you know for me like I said I use Mailer light so I just added it to my subscriber list and mail in Miller Light. It was very easy.

Very good. Very, very, very good. That's exactly. So that is your Plan B. You've always got your newsletter and how's that going? How can people subscribe to that?

Um, if they just go to my website, umrachelneoc.com, and that's on my bio, then there's just a a form to fill out just their email and then they just have to confirm it. And then over on bad Redhead media, where my demographic is primarily writers and bloggers, I ioffer them. If they sign up for my newsletter then they'll get a free 10 top tips for blogging.

So, you know, it's like it's it's important to have some kind of a reader magnet is what people call that to get people to subscribe.

Hmm.

Yeah, Lada magnet. Yeah, it's it's so important, so important.

Hmm.

And actually well, well, well, I mentioned that I I wanna spend a little bit of time here.

On the idea of how by Mayor coffee does this, because many, many people have, and you've probably heard this yourself. Build your email list, build your email list. Build your email list gets pounded into you on every site you go to. And there's various ways to do this, but I tell you I want to show you how by me a coffee does it every time someone sends me a coffee and buy me a coffee. Monday.com.

I get an email from Bamia coffee to say, hey, someone sent you an email. I can give him a shout at live on the show. That's how I do it. I've got a sort of little a little trigger to come up and tell me when that happens.

I also get the email address so I can send them in a little thank you. Thank you for sending me a coffee. Your support means a lot to me.

But I could also send them a Christmas card. I could also send them an update every month to say, hey, look, Twitter's going away, here's where we're going now. Please come over to this site now. And this is exactly why you would do that if you were hanging out on Twitter and Twitter collapsed, or Facebook or Google plus as it was, or haps or blab, and you wake up one day and the site suddenly doesn't work.

You've got, you've got a list. You've built separately to that. You can go back to them and say, hey, look, you're probably wondering where I am. I've moved over to Discord or Instagram or actually I've got a LinkedIn event next week. This is why you're doing it, isn't it? You wanna be able to contact them separately.

Rachel, is that what you think?

Yeah.

Oh, sorry, yeah, yeah. You want to make sure that this is yours, you own it. And that's why, you know, it's it's a good idea to export those names and emails onto your list. And if you don't have a list, that's OK, you have. It takes time to grow. I've been growing my list since 2010, probably.

Just stop. You just gotta start.

So.

I mean.

Yeah, yeah, just start.

I got a question if I may how, how effective are those lists for you? Because me as a consumer, I do sign up for you know, updates, newsletters, but to be honest I.

But you hate emails, right? You fucking hide them. You fucking hide them, right?

No.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I, I, you know, I usually only go to my emails when I'm expecting an email, right? But I usually don't go through them to sort of browse and updates. So how effective is it for you? Because personally, I think there's going to be an innovative way that's gonna be changing that. Um, where, you know, I think Twitter actually might be a a method, but can can you sort of explain that? Thank you.

Yeah, it's interesting that, um, you asked that because one of my clients asked me if I could capture emails on Twitter and I said not. Right now we did have review and that was a way to do it, but not right now. We don't have that option. When you look at the data, it's and you'd have to Google it for the exact numbers, but I think it's, it's something like 0.2% of people will click on a link to make a purchase.

From Twitter, whereas from an email it's um, it's like 40% or something like that. I have to look at the data because I don't have it in front of me, so I don't want to.

Yeah.

Ah, so if he can get them to open your email, you've got a very good chance of them buying it.

OK.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

What's your answer?

Yeah, I yeah.

I'd have.

What you do can you do you wanna share what you're open rate is and what that even means? You don't have to share it.

Yeah, I'd have to look, but I I'm happy to share it. But I I don't know. Right now I don't have those tabs open.

Don't have that party, bro.

Now, is there a certain, is there certain age group that you're targeting specifically for, for what you do?

Got it.

Well, I'm. I'm an author, and I have a company that helps authors market their work. So my demographic is authors. So that's who. That's who I write my books for my business books. And so there's a lot of interaction that way. Did that answer?

Yeah. Yeah. That helps a lot. Thank you.

OK.

Yeah, knowing your demographic is huge. I have a really large.

Amount of people who come to my website or to sign up, or who sign up for my newsletter or who purchased my books, I'm able to track all those links and you know, probably 80% come from Twitter for me.

Yeah. Well, let me, let me reiterate what just happened there. This is really, really, really important for all of you like me, who keep hearing, build your list, build your list, build your list, because we keep getting it. Like we keep getting pounded on this one, so.

Rachel said the chances of someone buying your product from a Twitter link are 0.02%. Let's assume that's right.

But the chances of someone who opens your email if you get them to open it.

The chances of them buying your product are 40%.

The difference between Twitter and email is what we call an open rate.

What means is when someone you send someone an email, do they open it?

Do they actually read it?

I'd be interested in that's why we that's why open rate is such an important stat. You can send out 500 emails, but only 3% of them open the email.

You know, it's very demoralising, but of those 3%.

Which is, um, 15.

40% of them might buy your product.

You know which is 7 O you know it's worth doing.

I mean, I'm. I'm all about stats because I'm bloody lazy and I'm not sending out emails if they don't work. And that's sort of what you want. That's the question you're asking really. Do we emails work? What do should we bother? Because I can tell you for sure I hate getting emails. I hate it. Like I hate getting those bloody emails about, you know, it's Black Friday and we've got 60% off knives. If you come in tonight till 7:00 o'clock and get a free latte or a red wine or a pizza, just make su

But they do work. So it's worth, it's worth considering where we're going to spend our time. This is especially this is actually why I'm building out a discord server. I can have up to 250,000 people in that server, and I can control who gets in. Not everyone's gonna get in like a house on clubhouse. I'm not letting everyone in. I'm going to put segment them into different layers of people that have paid certain amounts.

And who are more likely to spend more amounts because I've got bills to pay?

Just a guy like everyone else who's got bills to pay. So it's fascinating stuff, isn't it? Rachel? You sound like you've really got it nailed down.

Well, you know, in thank you, I would say in a perfect world, right, I can't do everything myself. So I I work with a copywriter who helps me pull together all the information and then I go over it, I edit it and then I I send it out. So for me, the the.

Repurposing content is really what a lot of people do in their newsletters. But I like to create something new and interesting and I don't, I don't send them out that often. I think I've maybe sent out four this year and really only when it was something major that was happening. So I do think you have to pick and choose your your moments and then see how it works out. It's it's all a test, you know? We just try things. If they don't work, we try something else.

And have you tried anything other than newsletters? What are your other lead magnets and other correspondence tiles?

Well, um, I've written, I've been a Blogger since 2008, and then I've published 8 books. So I I do have a group of people who follow me here. I primarily talk about being a sexual abuse survivor and relationships and and writing and memoir and all that kind of stuff. Whereas for my business, that's where, you know, the money comes from. So I can either interact with people about the books.

That I'm writing. I I I've done A2 Twitter spaces, book launches and had hundreds of people at each one. And I had the last one I did. I had all these wonderful people offer whatever it is that they might have to give away, you know, 1/2 hour or consultation free or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So there's so many different ways that you can create events, whether they're live events like this or it's, you know, seeing people doing you know, zooms or whatever. Facebook we do a lot of book launches on Facebook. I hate Facebook, but it's a necessary evil right now. So I I manage probably about 60 different pages on Facebook. So really just understanding what your own branding is as well as where you're the.

The majority of your demographic spends time. Will help you in analytics is such a great clue to figure out where you should be spending your time.

I love what you've just said there. I love it because there's only there's only one of me.

And I wanna, I wanna share a want to share a real life example right here in the in the room so no one as as yet has as the voted on the Twitter poll and about clubhouse. I'm just trying to work out where I am on my phone.

Made.

Definitely need you get a tablet or to put for Twitter to come to desktop, but I I did a Twitter poll yesterday to say, are you on discord?

Is a very good example what Rachel just said. 30% of my followers.

So far by, you know, by deduction. So you know I am 30% of my followers are on discord based on this survey. If we rationalise that out, 34% said no. OK, so it's even split, but it does give me an indication that maybe I could spend more time there and reach people. I've actually done the exact same thing and please vote on this if you can. Some people have said do you use clubhouse? Only one person has voted so far and they said no actually.

Four people have voted. They all said no. So if I was to say, look, I've only got 10 hours a day, 2 hours a day, where am I going to spend my time? Discord, Clubhouse, LinkedIn, Twitter.

Going to the beach, having to sleep in, walking the dog. You know. Stats help you understand.

The the time pressures don't, don't they, Rachel? They they help you understand.

There it is. Bingo.

It's gotta vote for yes now. Keith, I just saw your poem. I just voted. Yep.

Bingo.

So it helps us understand where to spend our time. I'll be very interested in this tour of Poland. I'm very open to it if if this gets a very a very high majority vote on.

Clubhouse, then I'll try.

But, you know, there's only one of me and I'm already on three sides and I wanna spend time with my wife and I wanna get a bit of a sleep and I'm watching, you know, some shows on Netflix. And I want to have a bit of a life. So you've got to have a bit of a balance. But OC lost, OC lost art to jump in and tell us what you're doing there and you got a question?

No, it's just sort of wanted to to comment on what you said and sort of what brought me into was you know the title of this of this space was you know which site audio sites may be the best for networking and to me that it all goes down to the socialising aspect of the platform and and one key factor I feel Twitter is going to be you know a top contender. It's the fact that.

Even before months. You know, I believe this before mass, so he's irrelevant to to my point. Twitter has been a source of authentic news by the people, for the people for quite some time. And these news I come from a, you know, crypto community. So if you guys are aware, there's been a lot of rug pools, a lot of bad actors, especially right now with the whole FFX situation going on. But the news is really what what you know creates.

With socialising aspect, you have this platform where you're able to get your news and at the same time the news are coming to you live, you're able to talk about them with people in these spaces. So it's what you guys stated earlier, right? It's you're you know, you're able to do more than one thing in the same platform. I'm I was probably one of the first ones to vote that said no on your on your clubhouse. I honestly don't know what else it entails besides it being similar to spaces.

Yeah.

But, you know, to me Twitter is, you know, I wake up. Yeah, you know, I socialise with, you know, my buddies, my friends and then my following. And they know I do go through the news and, you know, see what's going on, you know, with the World Cup, you know, World Cup it, lot of news. You know, I've been, you know, consistent throughout Twitter. So I think, I think, you know, the whole aspect of being, you know, having the information available at that moment and being able to talk about and soc

Big advantage.

I love what you've said there and I'll bring bears in a minute, but I want to use the example of the World Cup.

So I love Netflix. I love it. I love Netflix. My favourite site in the world, maybe in the history of the world, maybe, you know, in this lifetime. I love it. I watch it every night.

And the reason I love it is that I can watch a show, I can watch a comedy, I can watch a doco, I can watch this, I can watch that. Sure, it's only TV, but it's actually a diverse range of TV. If, for instance, I wanted to watch the World Cup, I'd have to go to another site, maybe Kayo. I think that's what it is. And all they do is sport.

So if I'm in the mood for sport, I would go to that site. But that's all it does, just does sport, nothing else. Correct me if I'm wrong. So This is why I love Twitter. I can go and chat to my buddies, I can run a show, I can listen to a show, I can read the news, I can watch them GIF so I can make some gifts, so I can create some content I can get bits and pieces of. It's more diverse. Isn't that sort of what you're saying there?

Lost that isn't it.

Yeah, they're diversity. And, you know, having that, you know, communication aspect right away, you know, because you have Instagram, you have Facebook, but you can't really. I I wouldn't be able to talk to you in there like this. Yeah, you have Instagram live, but it's, you know, it's not like, you know, this room right here and especially. Yeah. But that's sort of what I wanted to comment on.

It's very it's very important for me because, you know, I can only do one thing at one time. I'm trying to do everything. I am the brand, I am the company. I am the dude. Like I'm doing everything. I don't have staff. I don't employ anyone to do my work. I do the work.

And I can only do the work that I can fit into it, you know, 10 hour period. But what are you thinking best you got your hand up there.

Yes, um, Keith?

How did you come to discord? Because I was um.

How sort of smiling when you, uh, you started mentioning discord and because I I belong to.

And I've experimenting with some discord communities because it's all the rage and web three and and some of these NFT communities, but just in general web 3.

And I've seen some good ones. I've seen some bad ones. Um and I, you know, but anyways, how did you?

Yeah, it's a good question.

You you come to discord.

Yeah, that's a very good question, so.

My style.

Aquarian Male and his 50s, living in Australia.

Is that I never, ever.

I can tell you this categorically. I never, ever try a site when it first comes out. Never. I'm what we call an early majority.

So I kept hearing people say our discord's good. Yeah. And it goes in the back, gets a point.

Someone says old wisdom's good clip.

Clubhouse is good.

And it just goes in.

Right. And I have this little bit of a tally going on in my brain.

I'm just making this up as we're speaking, but this is exactly how I feel. And so when I get to maybe 20 or that, geez, I keep hearing about this discord thing, I just keep hearing about it. Everyone's telling me about it. Like maybe it's time. Time to talk about it. So I tried wisdom because everyone was talking about it. I didn't like it, so I don't use it. I tried clubhouse because everyone was talking about it. I personally don't like it.

I tried discord and I got it within half a second.

Like, I plugged into the ecosystem and I was there. Like, I've never had this experience since I've discovered Twitter. I haven't been this excited for five years. I can tell you this for sure.

Sites come, they go and I try them and then I I think about them.

And then I I might try them. I might keep going. But when Twitter came 2000. When I discovered it, 2008.

I I got it straight away.

I've never been as excited as anything since that time when Vlad came, I got it straight away.

When Heps happened, I got it straight away.

I try things all the time. I try things everyday.

Swell. Cast is 1 of what you might have heard me talking about two weeks ago. I tried it. I mean, we did some stuff there. It's OK, but didn't grab me.

Though what happened with Discord is that it got me. It's, I mean like it's got me now. I can't see myself. I cheque it everyday.

I can't wait to get up to chicken.

I sometimes sneak a look at it before I go to bed.

It's got me.

You.

And I'm, I'm sure you're chuckling in your sleep there. It's advice. It's amazing, isn't it?

It, it, it is, I think it's more robust than what people think and you can use it both mobile and on the desktop and and I actually have a really good experiences with on the mobile. You just have to know that you have to swipe left left to right and you know it's it's it operates a little bit different it's sometimes the buttons a little bit elsewhere but you can do quite a bit with the phone and.

You know the the nice thing is, is that.

You you know, you were experimenting with this, with the bronze, silver and gold levels, you can token gate or or gate off parts of the server just to people who maybe they have reached a certain status and you reward them. Or maybe they paid for that status and you can run membership site. You can do quite a bit more.

I mean, there's plugins, there's all sorts of things, yeah.

Let me pick up on that. Let, let, let me tell you, let's tell people exactly what you're talking about there. And I'll give you a really good example, a real world example. So in the nest you'll see that the most recent.

Tweeting the nest is what I call buy me a coffee Monday.

And that's a link to my buy me a coffee page if you want to have a look at what buy me a coffee does.

Now I have 3 levels on my bimmer coffee page. One is you can just buy me a coffee. They're 5 bucks if you like the show and you wanna help me pay the bills. I'm doing this for free because I love doing it. But if you want to pay, buy me a coffee. Then you can buy me a coffee. Cost 5 bucks.

I I get it goes to strip and then they send it to me about two days later. That's good. That's that's what I've been doing and I've bought a lot of equipment that way. The 2nd way to do it is I have a membership site. I have this membership site now, exactly what business talking about? I have a bronze member which is someone who buys me a coffee once a month. You can set it up to just automatically come out of your account. You'll love the show. You're listening to the show. Anyway, let's just

Were better help him out. Then there's $10.00 a month and this is where it gets really interesting as it relates to discord.

$10.00 a month is what I'm going to call the silver members. You can do this, you can do this yourself. This is why I'm telling you this. So I'm going to have silver members.

Bronze, silver, gold.

And the silver members get one audio chat per month with me in a group.

Specifically for them.

Whatever they want to talk about as a collective hub, we call this a mastermind group. People that are hanging out in the same realm. This is not people coming in randomly from the Internet thinking, what's this about? These are people that know who I am, know what we're going to talk about, come with really focused questions, help each other out. We're building a silver community.

And they're going to get an audio chat. I can do that with discord. I can just push the audio button and it automatically starts in 256 KPH. I'll tell you about that a minute. Kilobytes per second. Not kill kilometres per hour. But and then I've got a gold members account, not the movie.

I'm not. I'm not Mike Myers. It's not the movie.

We have gold members who get a video chat with me.

Once a month I'm going to have a video chat on discord only for people that have paid 25 bucks a month because they get it. They want to go deeper.

And you can do this. So I'm using buy me a coffee in concert with discord.

To build a community, I've got 50 supporters. So far 25 of them have joined the community and we love it.

Yeah.

And this is what we're talking about, Bess, isn't it this idea that you've got to move people off a rented property and into your own, into your own house, into your own factory?

Absolutely. In fact we were talking about this riffing on this earlier about you know feeling bad that we let it we let ourselves slide to build our our our communities on rented property and now you know but but I guess you know you don't have to look backwards and and lament you can look forward and say hey that was just an evolution in my learning and instead of calling out mistakes we just call it as you know an investment in your education.

How about that, you know, and and you move forward because I mean we're all learning, we're all progressing. You know, my 85 year old mom that's still consulting at that this age did a career change at the age of 59 and she, she pivoted and learned something new and went back to school and you know and so and so it.

That's very inspiring hits of 60 years as a new person.

I mean it's it's like, you know do whatever the hell you want you know. And don't don't put boundaries on yourselves and and just keep moving. And I don't know my mom will will stop moving until the day she takes her last breath because I can't even keep up with her you know. But.

One of the reasons why I'm excited to talk about this business that I think you've been worried about me as a creative, I haven't really found my mojo, but now you can hear me talking about some way to pay the bills in an authentic way for me.

And it's it's so exciting. This is why it's so exciting. I've been able to MELD 2 worlds. I'm a creative and I need to pay the bills. I desperately wanna mix cast for Tascam mixed cast 4. That's going to be my Christmas present.

Maybe next year at this rate. But, you know, I wanna buy new tech. I I wanna, I wanna be able to contribute to the household. I don't wanna just sit in the back of the house talking into this piece of foam everyday and pretend I'm famous. I wanna be famous.

But more importantly, I wanna pay the bills. I want to be an active contributor to society. Yeah. And I think, what with your mentorship, we've been able to come up with this really robust solution. Haven't.

Are you talking to me?

I am. Of course I am. You you you have inspired me to think deeper about this. You know this money model. Creatives are terrible at doing this. I'm.

Ohhhhh yeah yeah. I've remembered these painful conversations that I totally felt like.

Were starting to hate me. I mean we were back chatting with and then I said no, he's just like my wife. My wife is a creative and this is a tough conversation. It's it's not the core central of who you are. And so I immediately remember I I backed off and I told you, hey my wife like you, I get you, you know. But it was I could tell you were like.

I knew you weren't too happy with where I was taking the conversation, and then all of a sudden now you found a way to pivot and make it work for you and who you are.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've been able to make it mine. Yeah, like I love buying me a coffee. I love what buy me a coffee stands for. I love the idea that I'm doing this show anyway, and I love doing it. And if you love watching it or listening to it, well, why don't you just throw me 5 bucks?

I've gotta pay the bills somehow. I just as a as an aside, I was at a restaurant the other day and someone said you mate, I'm going, I'm going to the small country town. They're paying me 75 bucks an hour to hold, hold a stop sign for 12 hours.

I've just got to hold a stop sign in front of these big trucks to look so that people don't hit them and they're gonna pay me 75 bucks an hour to stand there in a, you know, a yellow jumpsuit.

Is 18 year old kid telling his dad that he's making more money than him and he goes. It's 12 hour gig, 75 bucks an hour. That's 900 bucks, right? I said, oh geez, you know, all you gotta do is stand in the yellow jumpsuit in the middle of the highway, in the middle of the night and you can make almost $1000. It can't be that hard. It did occur to me.

So I'm trying to find ways that I can authentically pay the bills by new tech.

And it's a it's a challenge. Not everyone's comes out of the womb with that entrepreneurial genius built in. You've gotta struggle and make it up.

I am one of those people that did not, yeah.

Yeah, and and I'm talking to you. I'm talking with you. And for you, Michael, you know, I'm, I'm running ahead to to, I'm running ahead of everyone. That's why I'm setting up this community. I'm running ahead. I'm making all the mistakes.

And I gotta be honest, I actually got the idea from you partially in the sense that you said that if you donate 50 bucks, we'll talk about this you wish list.

Well, I'm glad somebody's made it work.

But you, but you have, you've, you've got 50. But let, let me just back up a bit.

The third element of the buy me coffee landscape.

Is what's now called the wish list. This is a fantastic idea. So instead of you buying me a coffee, which I could buy a coffee with, or might not buy a coffee, I might buy a falafel or put it towards the phone bill.

I've told you in my wish list, which is the third option, that I want a Samsung S7 tablet and that they cost 798 and if you donate 10 bucks it'll come off the cost of that.

And I'm currently at 20 bucks. You did this for your Rd Caster pro too.

Do you? Do you went one step further and this is a very good lesson for everyone in this room. You said, OK, if you give me 50 bucks, I'm gonna run a special class for everyone who's given me 50 bucks.

Tell us about that. How do they do that and how do they how do they donate some money to you?

No, it's pinned to my my Twitter profile right now. Yeah, it's through giving Tuesday tomorrow. Anybody who donates $50.00 or more to the Road Caster Pro 2, then I will do a special audio workshop on December 11th.

And you know, the idea is that I'm an audio engineer and I help people to optimise their audio and so on, and a lot of people are getting the Roadster Pro 2.

But I don't have the ability to get one for myself right now. I'm actually, things are really tight, really, really tight for me. So I'm sort of relying on my community to help me out. And then once I have one, people who do have one and they want to make their sound better or they need to know how to route this or do that, I can help them with that because I'll have the same mixer that they have so.

You'll have the gadget in your hands.

Yeah, and as a thank you, I, I, I'm, I can offer a an audio workshop for anybody who donates $50.00 or more. So yeah, that's that's the idea.