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What’s The Buzz Around Clubhouse?
With the world turned upside-down due to the pandemic, people have significantly increased their social media consumption over the past year. We have seen many new social media platforms and features emerging in the past year, but there is one specific social media platform that has particularly grabbed our attention.
There’s been a lot of buzz about Clubhouse over the last year, leaving some people to wonder what all the fuss is about. While new apps tend to often come and go, Clubhouse has managed to stand out as one of the most unique app releases in recent memory. For many, when it comes to social networking apps, most people think of only Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. They enjoy the ease of creating content in text and photo/video formats and love the attention they get from other users in the form of likes, comments and shares. And it’s needless to say the endless scrollable content users get for themselves on these apps. It’s a design that works well for the apps mentioned above, but that’s not to say it’s the only way a social media platform can operate.
Clubhouse has been around since March 2020, when it was launched by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Paul Davidson and Rohan Seth. By May 2020, it already had 1,500 users and was worth $100m. The main reason Clubhouse has been such a hit is its fresh format and invitation only platform. Its curated live audio recreates an on-stage and event-like talk experience in a social media setting. Clubhouse is a social networking app in its most basic sense, but the way people interact is considerably different. After opening the Clubhouse app, users are presented with a list of virtual rooms to join. Each room features a small group of speakers talking about any topic imaginable. In contrast, the rest of the users are audience members that sit back and listen to the conversation at hand. The entire experience is audio-only, with users able to switch between rooms whenever they’d like, request to speak in one of these rooms, or create their own room for others to join. Users aren’t given the option to turn on their cameras or to stream video or use text to say something. As noted in a blog post, the company says,
“Clubhouse is voice-only, and we think voice is a very special medium. With no camera on, you don’t have to worry about eye contact, what you’re wearing, or where you are. You can talk on Clubhouse while you’re folding laundry, breastfeeding, commuting, working on your couch in the basement, or going for a run. Instead of typing something and hitting Send, you’re engaged in a back-and-forth dialogue with others. The intonation, inflection and emotion conveyed through voice allow you to pick up on nuance and form uniquely human connections with others.”
That captured the attention of the tech industry, initially, and then of the more prominent names such as Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, Drake, Chris Brown, Malcolm Gladwell, and many more of whom began appearing on the platform. This has driven the rapid growth of the app and put it in as good a position as any one-year-old startup could expect to be. However, this doesn’t guarantee a sure shot success of the platform in the long run as the drop-in audio format is not exclusive to Clubhouse, and social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Telegram, LinkedIn, and others have already launched or started working on their versions of the drop-in audio format. Above and beyond that, there’s also no guarantee that the format will translate to a broad public appeal or that it will have staying power once popularized worldwide.
What does Elon Musk have to do with Clubhouse?
On February 1st, 2021, Elon Musk hosted an audio-chat on Clubhouse, with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev. The event maxed out the app conversation room limits and therefore had to be live-streamed to YouTube; resulting in Clubhouse adjust max capacities. It helped propel Clubhouse to the top of the startup charts and sparked a scramble for invitations. As of May 10, 2021, Clubhouse has reached 10 million users. Clubhouse has announced forthcoming new features, like tipping, and ticket or subscription purchases, to pay creators on the app directly. Having raised new funding since its launch, Clubhouse is now valued at $1bn and is considered a Unicorn startup like Airbnb, Uber and SpaceX. Musk summed up the appeal of Clubhouse during his chat with Tenev, noting that “context switching is the mind-killer.”
Some Clubhouse people or rooms to follow are:
1. Tech Talks
Conversations that aim to make tech accessible to all.
Industry: Tech
Members: 70k
Followers: 336.4k
2. Startup Club
One of Clubhouse’s most popular clubs and a hub for all things startup-related.
Industry: Startups, Entrepreneurship
Members: 63.4k
Followers: 418.6k
3. Human Behaviour
This club, which features discussions on practical applications of human psychology, claims to be the largest on Clubhouse.
Industry: Startups, Psychology
Members: 27.6k
Followers: 476.2k
4. Marketing Club
This is Clubhouse’s largest marketing club. They host a weekly industry roundup on Mondays.
Industry: Marketing
Number of members: 163
Number of followers: 243.5k
5. Sales Training for Online Business Owners
Live training in the art of sales.
Industry: Sales, Entrepreneurship.
Members: 84
Followers: 881
So what does this mean for business?
Start attracting new audiences in Clubhouse and create your own event! Have some fun with it, get creative with your speaking topics, and have your staff join in on the fun too. Any and every business can get involved, and all it takes is a cell phone and the internet. Clubhouse engagement metrics are out of this world, and businesses can stand to generate a truly engaged audience with the right creative topics to speak on.
Reach out to your favourite Connectors at info@teambti.com or fill in this form to get started with the right Clubhouse strategy to boost your business engagement online and acquire a new audience.
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