What is Clubhouse and Why Should You Care?

New social media platforms pop up all the time. However, it's hard for new platforms and apps to compete with long-established giants such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

For new social media platforms to succeed, they need to bring something new and unique to the table. In some cases, it's just a matter of launching the right app at the right time, and that's precisely what Clubhouse has managed to do on the Apple App Store.

Although Clubhouse is still in beta and not open to the public, it has managed to grow to over 1M users in less than a year. That might not sound like much, but not anyone can join Clubhouse, making it all the more appealing.

Let's talk about the Clubhouse app!

An Introduction to the Clubhouse App

Clubhouse markets itself as a 'drop-in' audio chat app, but there's a lot of social media DNA if you look closely at how it works.

When you join Clubhouse, you get to create a profile and link to your accounts on other social media platforms. You can tell other users a bit about yourself and offer the opportunity for them to follow you. So far, Clubhouse might sound pretty generic, but that's until you get to its 'rooms.'

Clubhouse doesn't have a feed. Instead, your feed is a "hallway," it shows you rooms that you can join and listen to as other people talk. There's no chat, emojis, stickers, GIFs, or any other type of communication. With the Clubhouse app, it's all about audio.

Anyone can start a room or club, both of which can be private or public. If you start a room, you get to decide who can speak and when, so everyone doesn't talk over each other all at once.

As a Clubhouse user, you can pop into any public room that you see and listen in on interesting conversations, experts sharing tips on growth hacking, random people talking about their interests, and much more.

What Makes Clubhouse Unique (and the Challenges It Faces)

Clubhouse is unique in that it closely resembles a social media platform, but it's built all around audio and conversations that disappear as soon as they're over.

Since you don't have a feed, your followers can't listen in on conversations from the past. Once a room closes, there are no transcripts or recordings. Instead of frantically scrolling through a feed or stories, Clubhouse forces you to be more selective about the conversations that you join in. After all, you have to listen to get anything out of them.

Another aspect that has contributed to Clubhouse's drastic growth is that you can't just go ahead and create a Clubhouse account on a whim. To join the conversation, you need to get an invite or have multiple friends with accounts who might be able to 'wave you in.'

Most users can only invite one other person into Clubhouse, giving the app an exclusive feel. Moreover, at this time, Clubhouse is only available for iOS devices, which means Android users are out of luck until the app decides to open up, which could take a while.

One massive challenge that Clubhouse faces is content moderation. Since the app doesn't keep transcripts, moderation becomes all the more difficult. Clubhouse encourages its users not to record rooms, which means users might be exposed to harassment and inappropriate content. In fact, there's already been controversy because Clubhouse doesn't enable users to report harassment or even block other users.

Who Can Benefit from Joining Clubhouse

Clubhouse is all about exclusivity, from its disappearing rooms to its limited invitation system. The app has gone to great lengths to entice celebrities and well-known experts in their fields to sign up and use the app to engage with their fans.

We know for a fact that Oprah has used Clubhouse, as well as Mark Cuban, Jared Leto, Paris Hilton, Daymond John, Chris Rock, and many other high-profile names.

Although that doesn't mean that you get to have a one-on-one conversation with Oprah, Clubhouse's exclusive user base means that you can listen in on people and insights that you wouldn't get an opportunity to otherwise.

Thinking about the Clubhouse app as just a way to join in spontaneous conversations glosses over a lot of its more interesting uses, such as:

• To give coaching talks in one-on-one sessions
• To host virtual events for large communities
• Networking with experts in your field (there's a significant growth hacking community on Clubhouse!)

Right now, Clubhouse is very much like Facebook was in its infancy: a cool and exclusive social media platform. As long as it can retain that exclusivity and face its moderation issues head-on, we're confident that Clubhouse can carve out a nice niche amongst other social media apps.

In early 2020, the company was valued at around $100, and since that valuation it's now at $1 Billion. If you can manage to snag an invite, we recommend that you check it out.

Looking for another way in? Download the Clubhouse app and reserve an invite today!