What is Clubhouse, exactly?

Join us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CherryCreekNews

Audio chatrooms like Clubhouse have become the hot new media by tapping into the age-old appeal of the human voice Damian Radcliffe, University of Oregon Google “What is Clubhouse?” and you’ll find a flurry of articles written in the past few weeks about this fast-growing social network. It’s not yet a year old, and much of the buzz stems from the fact that Clubhouse is invite-only, bringing with it an element of exclusivity.
Clubhouse’s key attribute is its medium: audio, which sets it apart from established social media and messaging services like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp and YouTube that use text, photos, video or a mix. Clubhouse combines the structure of old-school text chatrooms with the immediacy and emotion of the human voice.
The social media service is tapping into the creativity, intimacy and authenticity that audio can deliver, a trend that lies at the heart of the current golden age of podcasting.
Amid the hype, Clubhouse faces privacy and harassment challenges that could make it difficult for the company to maintain a trajectory that has seen it grow from 1,500 users and a US$100 million valuation in May 2020 to 2 million weekly active users and a potential $1 billion valuation.
How it works
Once you’ve scored yourself an invite, the app is pretty easy to navigate. You can look in your calendar to find conversations based on your interests, which you identify at sign-up. Or you can browse “rooms” with discussions currently in progress. You can also set up your own event. Rooms can be public or private, you can listen quietly or join the conversation, and you can enter and leave rooms at will.
Activities typically range from interviews to panel events and wide-ranging discussions. Some efforts are even more ambitious; at the end of last year a group of Clubhouse members put on two performances of “Lion King: The Musical,” featuring actors, narrators and a choir. What’s the appeal?
Exclusivity, media buzz, engagement from Tesla founder Elon Musk and high-profile investment from venture capitalists have all helped pique interest in the app. As a scholar who studies storytelling, I’ve identified three other factors that may contribute to its ongoing appeal.
First, audio is an intimate medium. You can hear the inflections in people’s tone of voice, which convey emotion and personality in a way that text alone does not. If you make a joke or are sarcastic over a text or email, your attempt at humor can easily fall flat or be misinterpreted. That is less likely when people can hear you.
Moreover, hearing from people directly can generate empathy and understanding – on tough topics that listeners might have become desensitized to, such as bereavement, addiction and suicide – in a way that text alone cannot.
Second, there’s serendipity. Although events and structured conversations are increasingly held on Clubhouse, you can wander around, dropping into rooms on topics ranging from hip-hop to health tech.
Eavesdropping on random conversations brings with it a certain unpredictability. It’s hard to know where to look for quality conversations, which is why the network is proposing to develop a “Creators” program designed to nurture “Clubhouse Influencers.” But sometimes frivolous and trivial is fine. After all, it would be exhausting to listen to TED Talks 24/7.
This unstructured approach has an appeal at a time when people’s media habits are increasingly governed by algorithms, making it hard to bump into something new.
Finally, there’s the fact that audio is a great background medium. I grew up in a household where public radio, the BBC in my case, was alwa…