Clubhouse - the new kid on the block.
Not sure if you heard the news, but apparently Elon Musk wants to have a casual chat with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin over some new application called Clubhouse. Not sure about what exactly - space, crypto, U.S elections, who knows! In the midst of all the scandal between Facebook’s data privacy issue and Twitter’s attempt at suppressing freedom of speech, there was no doubt that big tech competitors would start taking advantage of the situation. We saw this happening with WhatsApp’s new data policy and other apps like Signal and Telegram being backed up by very influential people like Elon Musk himself. So, what is Clubhouse all about? Here at Mint Stalk, a leading digital marketing agency based in Dubai, we studied the topic in detail and here’s a rundown of what this new platform is about.
It’s basically just the hottest thing at the moment in the social media scene. Clubhouse is a drop-in audio chat social media platform that was founded in 2020, so it’s fairly recent and according to the Guardian, the app is “a hybrid of conference calls, talkback radio and house party”. The reason for Clubhouse’s success is due to its one-on-one voice only concept that allows people, literally anyone (e.g. Elon and Vladimir), to just chat. It’s almost like a Reddit kind of platform, but vocal only - no videos or photos involved. You can follow people’s profiles and invite them to discuss - almost like a phone call but it’s very informal and spontaneous. It can be used as a collaborative tool, a learning tool, a podcast tool, anything, but more interactive, allowing people to get more involved.
Spontaneity is a keyword here -
It allows discussion to happen at any point in time. “Hey Vlad, I know it’s 3:00am but I had this awesome idea of building a Kremlin-like building on Mars. You’re up?”. Anyway. From a start-up perspective, this platform has gone viral with over 2 million users since 2020 and is now valued at $1 billion, which is huge! It’s still a little bit elitist at the moment as you have to get invited by an existing Clubhouse member to be able to sign up and use it. Fun fact: Elon Musk’s account busted Clubhouse 1000 attendee limit as he was interviewing Robinhood CEO - I mean, what a time to be alive.
A lot of people seem to think that Clubhouse is the future of podcasting which is a big shift from the planned and scripted ways podcasting is done. Here at Mint Stalk, a leading digital marketing agency operating in the UAE, we can see firsthand that this could be a very powerful tool for businesses to get onboard with. One of the reasons is that Facebook and Instagram are still very popular but somehow their content and legitimacy is taking a hit as new platforms with more meaningful content are launching. The good thing about Clubhouse is the fact that its content is a bit more selective (as in, restricted to a certain category of people) and therefore less cluttered with useless content. This could be an incredible opportunity for big brands to jump on that trend and talk about their business activities in an innovative way, at least once Clubhouse opens it to the general public. Just imagine Clubhouse for the American political debates - I personally cannot think of anything more hilarious and chaotic as they already shred each other to pieces on Twitter. WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE!
Also, Clubhouse might be able to help members to monetise their content. As opposed to Facebook and Instagram that basically take your data and sell it to other companies, Clubhouse has the potential to help people make money using a sort of subscription-based or tipping option for other users to support the profiles they want more content from. Tying engagement to revenue could help Clubhouse leverage its position significantly (Zuckerberg is probably already working on Facebook’s version of Clubhouse).
When you join Clubhouse, you pick any topics of interest (tech, science, economics, health etc.) and go by the recommendations that the app offers. It uses a little bit of a Snapchat function here where, once the call ends, that’s it - you can’t go back and relisten. The conference room is closed and deleted. It’s quite awesome to see how Clubhouse basically merged different functions from other social media platforms and just made them somehow better? Clubhouse even managed to slip under China’s door and allowed users from there to speak completely freely for a few days. What a time to be alive, right? The only fear around Clubhouse is that the app has such a huge potential that it might start growing too fast too quickly and just become another version of the other platforms - which is the last thing users want at this point.
At Mint Stalk, a leading digital marketing agency based in Dubai, we understand that such massive trends are always good news for customers and businesses - the fact that big techs are being challenged is a relief, partly because it would be boring if Facebook and Instagram carried on being the only big giants during our lifetime, but also because it’s another way at keeping these same big giants more accountable - just like Elon did with Robinhood CEO. Alternatives are always fun and hoped for in the marketing world as we get to experiment and play around with, as well as study their progress, popularity and downfall. Clubhouse is just representative of many new startups seeking to make a change, whether from an investor’s or content creator’s perspective and it’s truly exciting seeing it all happen at once - it has so much space of growth and improvement, and we are here for that.
