Everything you need to know about Clubhouse
There’s a high chance that you already heard about Clubhouse, but a very low chance that you managed to join the new social media network. In order to join, you need to get invited by an existing member. Clubhouse is building its reputation on exclusivity but that will not always be the case. Although the service is almost one year old, most people are hearing about it just now and we can thank Elon Musk for that. The richest man in the world popped into one Clubhouse room last week bringing the service a lot of attention. So, if you want to know what is Clubhouse, and how does it work, here’s everything you need to know about the newest social media service.
What Is Clubhouse?
Clubhouse is an audio-only social media network. It allows users to jump in and out of different chatrooms on different subjects. You can think of it as a live podcast or even a group phone call where only a few people participate in the conversation while the rest is listening. Although any member can start a chat, the members who start chats are usually famous, or at least knowledgeable in a specific topic.
The company describes itself as “a new type of social product based on voice. Clubhouse is a place to meet with friends and with new people around the world—to tell stories, ask questions, debate, learn, and have impromptu conversations on thousands of different topics.”
How to join Clubhouse?
Clubhouse is only available on iOS for now. The company is working on an Android version of the app. But starting on iOS is part of a policy to scale up slowly since there are more Android users than iOS.
While most social networks have a browser version, Clubhouse is exclusively on iOS. The only website the company has is joinclubhouse.com, which serves as a pointer to the App Store.
When did Clubhouse launch?
Clubhouse was founded by Paul Davison and Rohan Seth in March 2020 and quickly grew to have over 1,500 users in May despite being invite-only. Now, almost a year later, and after Elon Musk’s publicity stunt, there are more than a million registered Clubhouse users.
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Why is Clubhouse invite-only?
The company is planning to open the app for the general public sometime soon. “We are building Clubhouse for everyone and working to make it available to the world as quickly as possible.” the company says, “It’s not intended to be exclusive; we just aren’t ready to ship the general release version yet.”
According to the company, there are two reasons for the delay. The first is to build communities slowly, and the second is to create more features to allow the app to handle a large user base.
“Before we can move from a beta to a general release we want to ensure that the product can handle more people. Among other things, this means having robust community policies and tools to ensure that people have a great experience as the user base scales up.” said founders of Clubhouse in a blogpost.
Who is on Clubhouse?
Clubhouse is full of celebrities and influencers, a quick tour around the app and you might find public figures like Drake, Oprah, Kevin Hart, Tiffany Haddish, Chris Rock, and others. This is mainly what Clubhouse is about, random users can get to hear, and perhaps participate in conversations with famous people. They might be guests in a chatroom or even host their own chat.
What should you listen to on Clubhouse?
Once you finally get access to the app, it will offer you a page full of topics to follow. You can follow topics like tech, wellness, sport, and others. In each topic, you will find users who share the same interest and you can follow them. Then you can either start your own room to talk about a specific topic or join an existing room.
The chat rooms aren’t permanent, users will create and end rooms as they wish and nothing is recorded by Clubhouse. However, some members choose to record the chat or stream it live on YouTube or Twitch.
Any cons?
Clubhouse is already facing problems with hate speech and content moderation. According to The Verge, the company didn’t seem to have a plan for moderating content. The app had to announce new community moderation guidelines back in October after many issues of abuse and hate speech have been reported.
So if you are not already on Clubhouse, all you can do right now is to reserve your username and wait for the general launch of the app.
