Those in the know have definitely heard of Clubhouse. No, it’s not a popular bar or a famous sandwich; it’s a recently released social app on iOS that had recently decided to lift its invite-only restriction when it comes to joining the platform.
In an attempt to further re-engage users, the platform has decided to tread a lighter path, one that focuses more on casual chatting, meet-ups and in facilitating more spontaneous social hang-outs. A rather timely update in functionality, seeing as how daily chat room creation has now reached the 700,000 mark.
The Wave
The wave isn’t something new to social media. For the most part, it’s a very well-known icon used as a prompt or signal to indicate ‘presentness’ or, at the very least, availability. The “Wave” on Clubhouse doesn’t work very far from that notion and actually functions similarly to Facebook Messenger’s ‘Active Now’/Green-Dot status indicator. In very much the same way, The Wave lets you signal connections when you’re active and able to chat, allowing you to create rooms upon the response, given that your contacts are interested, of course.
Clubhouse itself released a statement relating to how it wishes to improve the app’s use-case by banking more on the “social” aspect when using social media. They attribute the idea behind The Wave to that of catching up with long-time friends and relatives of small communal moments and celebrations. If we were talking about being empathetic, Clubhouse certainly nailed it with this one.
The Stream Era
Live-streaming isn’t a radically new concept. In fact, live-streaming was first introduced in 2007, piloted by a platform with the same name. At its core, The Wave option pretty much emulates the same idea with live-streaming in that it wants to facilitate and even encourages deeper and more meaningful interaction. Staying in touch with friends and family has never been easier thanks to social media, and the fact that you can also engage in video-calling as opposed to just audio-calling or simply messaging makes each moment all the more impactful and sentimental.
Especially in recent times, Clubhouse has thus far proven to be a decent platform when it comes to reaching out and staying connected. Some can even compare Clubhouse’s current standing to that of another platform that experienced great success with roughly the same format not too long ago – Houseparty. At its peak, Houseparty had approximately 20 million users after launch and around 1.2 million daily active users just eight months after release. It got so big so fast that Epic Games, creator of the phenomenal game, Fortnite, purchased the platform in 2019 in hopes of turning it into a social hub for its players. Sadly, it didn’t pan out the way Epic Games wanted to and ended up permanently shutting Houseparty down in October.
The Wrap
This move by Clubhouse has the intent of finding out which factors will contribute to determining how they can improve and expand on the app’s use-cases in order to establish their own niche. While it did have strong momentum upon release, it needs to find its place among competitors and soon, lest they find themselves at the mercy of those who wish to take them out of the picture.
While updated chat functionality is good, Clubhouse will need to carefully explore its other potential strong areas if it wants to distinguish itself from the likes of Twitter Spaces and Google Meet, where one is a predominantly audio-centric social media platform, and the other is a free streaming service with no app requirement and time-gated bottlenecks.
Please note:
This action will also remove this member from your connections and send a report to the site admin.
Please allow a few minutes for this process to complete.
