Audio-based chat rooms consumed in real time and limited to 5,000 listeners • The social network Clubhouse has replaced the communality of Facebook • Celebs like Oprah Winfrey and Elon Musk are already there • Is this a trend, or the new direction that will attract content giants?
Spawned a black market of orders.
Clubhouse app
Photo:
IP
When the Facebook network burst into consciousness about a decade and a half ago, it was based on the primordial human need for belonging.
Its users have encouraged the awakening of old friendships from the elementary school and military eras, to weave new ones, to develop professional network connections and between them to take part in a demonstration of exhibitionism like no other in the age of technology.
Wedding day photos, birthday greetings, location updates and dramatic announcements about entering relationships - all of these have become part of the existing Facebook profile holder.
Its users have been tempted en masse to wallow in each other's stream of consciousness, in a kind of huge information orgy that everyone, but everyone, is invited to.
The other networks simply copied the model and highlighted other aspects, whether visual like Instagram, or textual like Twitter.
Then came Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, thinkers of the social network "Clubhouse", and decided to change the rules of the game.
Reset posts, photos or videos.
White house screen in a minimalist design.
At first glance, Clubhouse simulates a wandering experience in a hallway laden with closed conference rooms.
Each contains a discussion on a different topic - from sports, through black protests, from technology to sex, through music, culture, LGBT rights or police violence. But to get into them you will need an invitation from an existing user of the app. The community and family (fake, or at least Imaginary) of Facebook, clubhouse exclusively replaced. Closed club membership. Only status symbol awarded to them, given to them by the lucky ones who have already managed to enter. And one more thing: the chat rooms are based on audio. They are non-reproducible, meaning they must be consumed in time True. If you were there when NBA player Jbeil McGee talked about the impact of the Corona on the league - you were privileged to be present for a moment while not returning, and perhaps even interacting directly with your favorite athlete. You were not there at that point in time? You missed. Killed the FOMO? Turns out she's just translated it, like most of your social interactions in the past year, into cyberspace.No wonder she spawned a black market for invitations to the new social network, when one could reach almost $ 100 on eBay?
And thanks to the headphones,
say - this is a niche product, for guests and podcast lovers.
And that's exactly how it started last May, when most of its users came from the high-tech and entrepreneurial worlds.
But Davison and Seth - the first is an entrepreneur who managed to sell his company to Pinterest and the second a former engineer at Google - knew that this was exactly the audience they needed to launch their product.
One who knows how to recognize the flash and is willing to put big money on it.
This is what happened: A few weeks after it was launched, the venture capital fund company Anderson Horowitz invested $ 12 million in it.
Less than a year later, Clubhouse has 2 million users and is worth $ 1 billion.
The celebs soon arrived as well, and here too they are the usual suspects in the "first to spot a trend" category.
Ashton Kutcher, Oprah Winfrey, Kenya West and Chris Rock are already there, as well as a long line of football, baseball and basketball players.
Earlier this month, one of the "rooms" hosted super-entrepreneur and Tesla founder Elon Musk, in a conversation about technology with the CEO of the "Robin Hood" platform (which has generated a lot of interest in the investment world recently) and the two, the so-called "broke the network." Them, with many of them left out due to the limit of 5,000 listeners in the room. Meanwhile in Israel, the only ones who have recently used the new platform are Ayelet Shaked and Yair Lapid.
So on the one hand it is an interesting app, in a world that has become adapted to many hours of listening. The product that accompanies the most important smartphone that has hit the market in recent years. On the other hand, this is also its main problem: exclusive and one-time, Clubhouse requires an investment of time. Its heavy users will explain to you that the 4-5 hours they spend on average in one day , So no different from listening to a radio show or a Ted lecture. So far Clubhouse has led to the creation of several similar apps in development (the Dallas Mavericks businessman and owner, Mark Cuban, is already invested in one), who will try to compete with it. That it will not last in the long run? Or maybe this is the new direction
Liu will navigate the rest of the social networks as well, with the addition of identical features?
"It's hard to define what kind of network will or will not last," says Roy Poverchik, Head of Growth at Any.do and user of Clubhouse himself (who last week offered his followers on Twitter three invitations to it "at the expense of the house").
"I think the audio component will not disappear, but will later integrate into all sorts of formats and become dominant on social media. Or as the person who turned me on to the Clubhouse platform, Omar Parchik, who defined it as the first social network to be 'Airpods first', said about weight." mobile first '. Facebook has been reported to be working on a similar platform, which means that one way or another - a dominant audio-based social network will emerge soon. As for exclusivity - this is a well-known' viral distribution 'method that many start-ups have used in the past. "A strong initial target audience, made up of Silicon Valley people and influencers, is not something new. But there is no doubt that Clubhouse has managed to build a very strong demand, by building a smart product."
Racism and sexism
but alongside the praise there are also quite a few complaints. "Its user experience is in the eyes of a catastrophe and incomprehensible," says Pobrchik. "On the one hand it is very simple at the 'what are you supposed to do' level in it, but the 'how to' is not very intuitive at first. It is a successful but very young platform, so there is sure to be a lot more to learn and develop."
The user experience is just one problem created by Clubhouse. Many users report problematic behavior of some of its users, and talk about harassment, troll behavior and sexism. High-tech women claim to be dominated by a masculine, white and rich atmosphere. Even racism is already plentiful there, in closed rooms, of course, and also anti-Semitism. One of the users and the CEO of a company himself, recently chose to leave the new social network, after falling into a conversation room that he defined as "a bunch of people talking to each other about why it's okay to hate Jews." Or in other words - audio or image based, unique or mass - One thing Clubhouse (like any other social network) has not been able to change yet, and that is human nature.
