Clubhouse

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Clubhouse

"Clubhouse app icon on a smartphone" Clubhouse Type Social Networking App Launch Date April 2020 Status Active Product Line product Platform iOS Website https://www.joinclubhouse.com/

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lubhouse is an audio-chat social-networking application founded by Paul Davison and Rohan Seth in March 2020. The platform is currently in its beta stage and uses an invitation based system where existing users have two invites to onboard to new members to download the application. The mobile app allows users to listen and participate in a conversation room usually centering around a specific topic or purpose. Unlike most popular social media platforms, once a room is closed, live chats in the room disappear and are not recorded. Clubhouse, 11 months after its inception, has grown to over 10 million users and reached a valuation of $1 billion. In its short lifespan, Clubhouse has garnered the attention of many celebrities who have shown up on the platform, making headlines that added to its buzz among social media users. Social media companies, looking at the success of Clubhouse, have additionally joined in on competing in the growing audio chat space on the Internet. In contrast to its successes, critics of Clubhouse have posed many concerns around its operations regarding handling of user data and the platform's lack of moderation and security. Founding creators Paul and Rohan have recently announced their goal of opening up Clubhouse to a worldwide release sometime later in 2021.

History

Creation

Clubhouse's invitation system

Founders Paul Davison and Rohan Seth previously worked on multiple entrepreneurial ventures together. Their most notable one was Talkshow, an application that allowed users to hold public text conversations. Their goal with Clubhouse was to make a social app driven by “conversations rather than posts.” The iOS app started off as invitation only, giving each new member 2 invites to send to their friends.

Notable Events

The joining of notable celebrities spiked Clubhouse’s usage since their early development in March 2020. Notable celebrities such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Drake have all joined the platform. Musk notably held a Clubhouse conversation with Robinhood CEO Vladimir Tenev about the unprecedented rise of GameStop stock . This incident surpassed the app's conversation room limits and was recorded and livestreamed on YouTube.

Growing Competition

The competition for Clubhouse has grown as social media platforms have been actively testing similar audio-based products and functionality. On March 10th, Twitter released a new app update to experiment with their new audio based platform: Spaces, which features similar functionalities to Clubhouse. Meanwhile Facebook has additionally been heavily rumored to be building a similar product as well.

Features

Clubhouse's Hallway View

Profile

Similar to other social media platforms, Clubhouse allows each user to create a profile. Each profile may contain a profile photo, follower and followers count, a small bio, and an @ handle. The application features a plain-text editor not restricting users from adding emoji’s to their profile, direct messaging, and their comments. The application additionally allows users to connect their Twitter and Instagram accounts to help users find people to connect with.

Clubhouse Hallway

The Hallway is Clubhouse’s name for their main feed. Here, users can find active and ongoing chatrooms to drop into along with the ability to schedule their own room. At the top right corner, users have the ability to search for a member, invite new members to clubhouse, view a calendar with upcoming rooms, view their notifications, or edit their Clubhouse profile.

Clubhouse Rooms

In Clubhouse, rooms are available to access from The Hallway and users can jump in and out of rooms as long as the room size is under a set limit. The three main roles of users on Clubhouse are Listeners, Speakers, and Moderators. When you first join a Clubhouse room you join as a listener who can listen in on speakers in a room. Listeners can be upgraded to either Speakers or Moderators. Speakers have the ability to mute and unmute their microphone and speak for everyone there, while moderators are given the ability to moderate the room through promoting and demoting user roles.

Unique Uses

Businesses on Clubhouse

Clubhouse actively pushes for big brands and creative collectives to adopt their platform. In December 2020, Clubhouse announced its Creator Pilot Program, offering in-house services to help brands produce events and widen their reach. Audio Collective, an audio creator community, is an example of a company that took advantage of this program, offering partnerships with creators and brands to build audio events on the iOS app.

China

Clubhouse, in the early stages of its development, was commonly used by users in China to freely express their opinions against Chinese government censorship. Many users recount that the non-permanent nature of Clubhouse influenced people to share more personal stories and have conversations with less of a filter. For Chinese users, the range of discussions included many political discussions that were otherwise not allowed on Chinese Internet. The Chinese government eventually blocked Clubhouse on February 8th.

Ethical Concerns

Privacy

Clubhouse has faced multiple accusations of mishandling user data. In one instance, the Stanford Internet Observatory confirmed that Agora Inc., the company that provides the backend infrastructure for the mobile app, was based out of Shanghai, China. This raised many concerns as Internet traffic indicated that users were still ultimately using the application. Furthermore, many have pointed at Clubhouse's lack of industry-standard security practices which are needed to adequately protect user data. Bloomberg in a recent article highlighted the existence of third-party websites that were web scraping and organizing Clubhouse chatroom audio for later streaming at a different site. Clubhouse’s lack of anti-scraping technology meant that virtually anyone could easily record the activity from a public channel.

Lack of Moderation

Clubhouse’s lax moderation on its platform has encouraged its users to discuss topics that are normally censored on other platforms. Numerous public figures associated with QAnon and other similar extremist groups were early adopters of Clubhouse, using the app to communicate with their supporters. The app, which is similar to other social media platforms, has continuously struggled with misinformation campaigns. To mitigate this issue, on March 5th, 2021, Clubhouse updated their community guidelines and released new tools to report specific instances that violated such guidelines.

Spread of Misinformation

Clubhouse is particularly vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation campaigns due to the relative difficulty of confirming claims during conversation. The flow of listening and talking is unfiltered by nature and interrupting speakers isn't possible in certain rooms. Thus, speakers and moderators can significantly impact the topic and direction of conversations. Much of the app's initial appeal to users revolved around creating a safe space outside of the rampant cancel culture ongoing in other mainstream social media platforms like [[Twitter]. However, users being incentivized to speak freely is not conducive to creating safe environments since users of malicious intent can act with little to no repercussions from aforementioned lax moderation. Racism, conspiracy theories, and gaslighting are some of countless methods of spreading disinformation which have inevitably surfaced on Clubhouse. In particular, conspiracy theories related to the coronavirus and the anti-vaccination movement have already been disseminated very recently through Clubhouse. It has also been reported that Clubhouse unknowingly hosted anti-Semitism, LGBTQ+ hate speech, and false health claims. In terms of relations between speakers and listeners, the unique connections that Clubhouse offers its influencers and their fans can strengthen parasocial bonds but can create new outlets for misinformation and abuse as well. One journalist interrogated Kevin Hart on questionable moments of his career through a Clubhouse room but was unable to conduct the interview properly due to frequent interruptions from other users defending him. While users can affect influencers, the inverse is arguably the app's most controversial and worrying feature. Elon Musk has been criticized for encouraging his Clubhouse listeners to invest in GameStop and cryptocurrencies like bitcoins or dogecoin, assets that he has financial ties with. Within Clubhouse, influencers wield exponentially more power and not necessarily for the better as their self-interests aren't always aligned with the general public's.