Clubhouse - The new Social, sans Media

Clubhouse is the trendy Apple iOS-only social app that centers around audio-only rooms. The buzzy app has been around since March 2020 but was (and still is) only available by invitation. But it’s been making headlines recently with some big names like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg dropping in and stirring the pot. I’ve been listening in on a variety of rooms for the past week and do see a lot of potential in this new category of online Social.

Technologically, Clubhouse is not much to talk about

You can easily describe the app as a glorified conference call. Yes, there are room moderators who have the ability to invite speakers from the audience up onto the stage (and kick people out), but the user experience is focused on listening to the current speaker and, optionally, raising your hand to contribute to the conversation.

So what’s special?

It’s the people! Duh! Clubhouse did a good job of rolling itself out with a healthy set of thought leaders, engaging personalities, and celebrities from a wide variety of topics who could provide valuable content for listeners, as well as facilitate energizing conversations with the members in the room. Topics vary from social issues, angel investing, real estate, agnosticism, BIPOC, veganism, various support networks, and many more. You can easily find your club or you can start a new one for yourself.

How is it different?

The Internet has already allowed people with seemingly random interests to band together to form communities (see the Cloud Appreciation Society for a fun story). There are hundreds of millions of Facebook Groups in existence. Reddit has hosted forums for many years, with r/wallstreetbets gaining some notoriety this past month in its disruption on financial markets. But I argue that these venues are predominantly text/image based and asynchronous in nature, which leads to information overload and lack of participation. Clubhouse’s key difference is that you communicate with your voice, in real time, interactively.

Why Voice and Real Time Communication Matters

Text can be boring and dull (thank YOU for bearing with me and reading this text). Words in a language are imprecise and a lot of people aren’t the most talented at writing, so ideas and meaning can be lost in transmission. But hearing someone’s voice (their speed of speech, their inflections and tones, and their variation in volume and emphasis) carries much higher fidelity and nuances where you can receive a much clearer understanding of their thoughts and emotions. And because this is all happening in real time (there’s no 15 second rewind button) and because you may be responding to this speaker, you are listening with focused intensity. You are likely gaining more substance in a Clubhouse room than listening to a podcast while you are commuting or at the gym.

Off the record - Hear the inside story

A conversation in Clubhouse room is not recorded (unless someone in the room is manually/surreptitiously recording it themselves). This gives people more freedom to say what they want to say without the worry of backlash from the mob of outsiders. Somewhat surprising to me was when Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev actually disclosed financial numbers (a $3B deposit required by the NSCC, negotiated down to $700M) when Elon Musk was grilling him with respect to shadiness going down with restricting stock purchases of symbols, including GameStop, last week. Vlad was much more opaque when giving interviews at all of the media outlets.

You will also hear more off-the-cuff rumors and predictions; today I heard that Priscilla Chan (Mark Zuckerburg’s wife) will be running for President, as many described her as wearing the pants in the relationship.

Tying it Together

I predict there will be a wave of new and successful Social meeting places like Clubhouse that will focus on bringing people together for conversations that they’ve been craving , after nearly a year of limited in-person social events. This will be the new Social, where people congregate and exchange their ideas through moderated dialogue. But there won’t be media artifacts. Because trying to preserve every interaction we encounter will prevent the most meaningful ones from ever spawning.