Why Clubhouse is on fire?
Clubhouse is one of the latest Unicorns in the Valley and it has apparently amassed more than 2m users in less than a year during the pandemic. No surprise, it’s literally on fire. I got on this app. a couple weeks back and have been pleasantly surprised with the quality of conversations that the app has driven in the ‘rooms’ full of like-minded people. I have had the opportunities to listen to Olympians talk about competing and goal-setting, Silicon Valley honchos talk about latest in tech. & startups, interact with well-known writers & poets and many more enlightening discussions on varied topics based on interest areas.
So what makes this app. so compelling? My quick thoughts below -
a) Disruptive to social networking -
The voice seems to be a natural mode of interaction driving more meaningful conversations, rather than interacting via the texts. Moreover, it can be as active or as passive based on user preferences — the user can choose to be a speaker and actively engage with the group in the ‘room’ or just passively opt-to listen-in while multi-tasking. The synchronous mode of communication drives deeper level of engagement, almost mimicking real-time interaction (without the visual aspect though). In a way, this seems to be a more evolved way of social networking as you accrue your community ( follows from others) based on the expertise you demonstrate while speaking and showing the depth of your knowledge on the topic.
b) Disruptive to podcasting -
The podcasting market has been on an uptrend and Clubhouse has the potential to significantly increase the TAM for this industry. In many ways, it’s better than podcasting, allowing the speakers to get a real-time feedback from the audience and facilitating a ‘live’ experience for the listeners. It’s no longer a passive medium now but an active community. Moreover, it’s significantly easier for the podcaster as there is no need to figure out the logistics and technicalities for the podcast, he/she just needs to log into this app. In a way, Clubhouse captures the long-tail of podcasting market, just as Twitter has captured the long-tail of blogging.
c) Disruptive to content creation —
‘Content is king’ is an old aphorism and the current digital world is increasingly driven by content (and data). Clubhouse democratizes content creation and consumption in real-time — anyone from the audience can be a speaker (create content) in an instant by ‘raising hand’ or decide to just consume. This real-time interaction drives closed feedback loop, akin to ‘live’ experience of human interactions.
As the Clubhouse further scales, there are topics related to content moderation, user privacy, security & infra. backbone that will become more imperative to be dealt with. For now, it’s indeed on ‘fire’ !
