So Clubhouse seems to be the newest thing when you think about a social media network with the focus on audio (it’s starting to be getting viral in germany). I first heard about a few weeks ago when Elon was tweeting about it and didn’t do any research about it.
On Clubhouse tonight at 10pm LA time
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 31, 2021
Then I saw another tweet:
Just agree to do Clubhouse with @kanyewest
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2021
and another one:
.@KremlinRussia_E would you like join me for a conversation on Clubhouse?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 13, 2021
But even after these tweets I didn’t have the thought to download and try the app, I still didn’t even researched what it is. What triggered me was actually the iOS App Store in the end. It was February 13th I read the book The Hero with a Thousand Faces and while reading I listened to classical music. I wanted to try out to listen to the Interstellar Soundtrack while reading and started it on Youtube. After around every 5 minutes an Ad started while listening to the music and couldn’t really focus on reading, so I decided to download an browser app which blocks ads on the app store. I started the app store app and there on the featured list appeared “Clubhouse”, I thought directly
So this is Clubhouse the thing Elon Musk has tweeted about it
I directly thought afterwards:
Let’s download it and try out to make my own opinion about it without doing any research
One problem was that the iOS devices I used was an iPad Mini from 2011 and the max iOS version on it is iOS 10 and I saw somekind of message that Clubhouse needs iOS 13 to be able to install it. The next problem was that I had an iPhone 6 with the max iOS version iOS 12, so I was still not able to download the app…
Long story short, I bought a new iPhone with iOS 14 to be able to try out Clubhouse. You can listen to the long story here (in german).
I tried out Clubhouse now every now and then for around one week at this time. Here are my current thoughts about it:
- “…Lots of self-important people talking about why they’re important…”. I can relate to that comment. But it’s definitely not always the case. I would say mostly. Just have a look at the bios of the profiles. Mostly you will find a long scrollable page with all the things someone did in his or her life and with all the links to other pages. So I got often the feeling people trying to sell you something. I mean you don’t have to look at the bios.
- Try out to just hop into different rooms and listen even if it’s not your native language. It’s really interesting to feel the vibe of the current conversation. You feel if someone takes a topic seriously or not or if everything is kind of just for fun. But it’s interesting
- I really don’t know where this can go. It could be really the next big thing or it could be a short time hype as long as we are in this corona lockdown situation. But it might be interesting how Facebook and co. try to copy the core features of clubhouse and implement it in their own applications like they did copy the Stories feature from Snapchat Stories to Instagram
- It could also be a company like Spotify might just aquire Clubhouse. Spotify is so far the one company which comes to my mind first which would fit to Clubhouse
- If you have a podcast or you have any other platform with an audience it’s a nice app to get direct feedback in real time from users, that’s in my opinion the most interesting thing to look out for. Not only feedback, just have a random talk with your audience, give them the chance to be also a creator. Or doing kind of a live event with a special guest like with Elon Musk in the tweets at the beginning of this post
- The last time I had this exciting feeling about a new feature was when Snapchat introduced Stories
- Like with every other social media network you could probably use the functionalities all day long, so keep in mind to spend your time wisely. What works for me currently is to use specific timeboxes when I use apps like this similar to batching. Keep in mind:
You should control the apps, the apps should not control you! (Regarding that this post “Age of distractions” might also be helpful for you)