It’s been a thrill to watch Clubhouse, the invite-only audio app thats now worth $1b, explode over the last few weeks in Australia and globally. I joined in Nov last year and very few Aussies were on the app, let alone active. But since Jan the amount joining has taken off and not just across tech circles – I’m now seeing lots of creatives, designers, TV/Film, investors and tech (of course).
Side note: If you want an invite just hit reply/reach out as I have a few to give out.
Audio only formats is nothing new of course, podcasts have been around for for more than decade in some form but audio-only social network seems new. Although I bet there’s probably a few examples in China inside their super-apps (WeChat voice discussions has been a thing for ages).
Just last night I was in a room listening to Deadmau5 and bunch of music execs talking shop, week before I hosted a pitch feedback session with some investors which got 60 people around the world joining and have enjoyed tuning into late-night chats with techies and VCs in SF (time-zones for us mean late for them!).
For a consumer app a few interesting things:
- The app is still new so you the audience are all early adopters and high quality (I’ve made some great few connections with new founders)
- Audio-only is a nice change (and far less friction?) from video-everything and suits some people far more than the YouTube/insta/snapchat crowd impromptu nature
- The ability to just open a private call-like chat to everyone or launch one is unique – kinda like an on-demand podcast?
- If want a lesson in ‘viral growth’ or network effects the 5 invites you get when you signup is a great to watch its impact
- Theres something to be said about hearing influential people from various circles e.g. music, tech, film etc, talk about their industry and be able to jump in and out
- I heard someone describe it as like making Silicon Valley like networking available to everyone (but you could argue Twitter and other social networks enable that too)
For Aussies joining there’s a few rooms I’m enjoying including the Vegemite on Toast Club, Breakie with Aussies at 8:30am and all the startup people with their investor and founder networking rooms is fun to watch.
Detractors are telling me that its essentially the same groups you see on Twitter but now in audio real-time format which doesn’t work well (people are horrible at running meetings IRL and it shows on Clubhouse). Also, the real-time nature means you have timezone limitations vs asynchronous networks like Twitter and Insta.
Will these factors will mean people will get bored and this social network experiment will die off? Or do we have a new social network ‘form factor’?
Time will tell.
