What is it?
Clubhouse is the latest “it” thing in the social networking space - at least among a segment of the population. It’s barely a year old but is growing like a weed with $110M in capital raised so far.
It’s audio-based social networking. It can be used as kind of a group chat or as a way to present and invite others to participate via Q&A. Then it’s kind of like a Zoom meeting with the video turned off. I guess that’s like um… a conference call. But somehow it’s more enjoyable.
Why is this capturing so much interest and adoption? Part of it is how it’s been promoted and expertly hyped to reach the “buzz” level rapidly. A friend of mine invited me and I’ve started inviting people too.
Yesterday was the first time I really participated in a “room” with lots of other people and both listened and participated as a presenter. It was pretty fun and I learned about some companies in the AR/VR space I don’t think I would have discovered otherwise.
Part of the appeal is that this is technology you can use in “lean back mode” in contrast to other text-based or video-based methods which are more “lean forward mode.” I first learned about these established modes a few decades ago from John Seeley Brown. I can’t find the slides anymore but it’s a thing.
Where will it go?
Like the early days of Twitter it’s easy to dismiss the value and point out that there is no clear business model other than “if we can get enough regular users then this will be worth plenty.”
A more acute issue already facing Clubhouse is moderation. As group discussions expand you invariably get “noise” that ruins the experience for long-standing users. Quora comes to mind here which was the “it” thing for a while because senior people were using the platform regularly for “serious Q&A” content. Then for a number of reasons I won’t go into here it started to get confused and polluted. It’s still useful sometimes but nobody talks about that one anymore. Before that we had similar issues on the early “VR” platforms like Second Life. Nobody will forget the troubles that corporate types had when they attempted to build a presence there.
There’s a continuum with openness and discovery on one end and control and efficiency on the other. I wonder which direction Clubhouse will chose. If they can find and maintain a footing (as SNAP did) then they could end up existing alongside or even substituting for some of the services we use now.
Right now Clubhouse is swamped with interest and they are scrambling to cope with the demand and requests for services and features. I’m sure they’re getting plenty of attention from investors as well, despite the lack of a business model.
I could see hosting some events on Clubhouse around investment ideas and starting a “club” of my own there for the purpose. I do some of this with Zoom now and that works well with people you know but not so much with an open audience.