When was the last time you had a face-to-face mask-free conversation with someone who is not part of your families nor in your close friend circles? The social-distancing restrictions have been tightened up in Hong Kong for many weeks, it is impossible to freely gather with social groups after 6pm. The lockdown fatigue has been emerging with the ongoing restrictions during Christmas and Chinese New Year, and this buzzy social media app from Silicon Valley — Clubhouse, sits at the very right timing to alleviate our lockdown exhaustion.
What is clubhouse? It is a voice-only social media app since April 2020. In less than one year after its beta launch, it has grown exponentially to 6 million registered users and more than 2 million weekly active users. Its valuation has gone to $1B USD from its original $100 million round.
‘It’s either dead by July or it’s something big’, said Josh Felser, Co-founder of venture firm Freestyle.
As of late January, none of my close friends were actually on clubhouse. With its invite-only nature, I signed up to reserve a username and joined the waitlist. As soon as I registered, fortunately a very kind clubhouse user pulled me in from the waitlist, so I did not need to wait with the feeling of FOMO. And that is where the addiction began.
Perfect Alternative To Socialise Under Social Lockdown
We are familiar with posting threads and sharing photos on different social media channels, interacting with likes and comments. What clubhouse stands out from the rest of social media platforms is that they offer a more direct and intimate alternative for users to interact with one another, especially when global lockdown is in place. Each chatroom is defined by who does the speaking, you will receive notifications to join different chatrooms when users that you followed started or scheduled the rooms. Clubhouse introduced a new kind of interaction that is more spontaneous, informal and frequent.
Get In Touch With People From All Walks Of Life
I literally became addicted to clubhouse in less than a day. The magic power that it got me into it was the instant connections with a variety of industry experts across different topics, especially the tech and startup communities. Before clubhouse arrived, I always like and follow the pages and people that I’m interested in so to keep up with their updates. However, this set up has been static. It is static in terms of the updates are mostly in the forms of texts, photos and one-way videos. Clubhouse has transformed this static process into a series of live interactions. From various investment-related conversations to language-learning sharing and livestream virtual concerts, clubhouse opened up the opportunities for us to get close to people from all walks of life.
A Frictionless Experience For Multitasking
Most of the existing social media platforms require at least our visual attention for engagement. With the podcast nature of clubhouse, we can keep up with the conversations while the voice is on the background of our phones. There is also no time or space restrictions to join in any chatrooms that you don’t want to miss out. Whether you are having a morning run or on the way to meetings, the nature of drop-in audio chat makes it easier for us to engage frictionlessly while getting on daily routines.
What was your experience with clubhouse so far? It has been just over 10 days since I joined clubhouse. When the notification pinged on my phone, it still got me intrigued to tap in and see what is going on, as opposed to some other notifications that I chose to ignore!
