Back-of-the-napkin Thoughts On The Highly-Anticipated, Invite-Only Clubhouse Beta 📱
So what is Clubhouse? đź‘‹
This new Social Media platform is promoting itself as a new type of network based on voice. When you open the app you can see “rooms” full of people talking — all open so you can hop in and out, exploring different conversations. You enter each room as an audience member, but if you want to talk you just raise your hand, and the speakers can choose to invite you up. Or you can create a room of your own. It’s a place to meet with friends and with new people around the world — to tell stories, ask questions, debate, learn, and have impromptu conversations on thousands of different topics.
The team at Clubhouse have intentionally limited the medium of all interactions to voice. Which so far has been great, not allowing camera naturally allows for more confidence and bias-avoidance, as well as removing text-based conversation which has obvious drawbacks compared to voice-to-voice (i.e. tone, nuance). The app is extremely simple, with no real fancy “bells-and-whistles” but rather a hyper-focus on building a rolodex of thought-leaders and communities for their audiences — quality > quantity.
Food for thought đź’
Approach
Clubhouse’s GTM plan is smart, and nostalgic for the evangelists of the OnePlus, controlling beta-user numbers to ensure quality and simultaneously creating a wave, no tsunami, of FOMO seems to be a win-win. Yet it will be interesting to see how the quality will change once the platform becomes “public” — maybe their moderator base will be large enough at this point to control it? Certainly, their initial brand-recognition will be tarnished?
The shiny and utterly elusive reputation that teases a land of quality conversation will surely crumble when exposed to the crassness and unfiltered public.
Oversimplified below, y-axis (A) is “Quality” both in interaction with people-of-interest (think celebrities, executives) and quality of discussion, and x-axis (B) is the user-base, “User Growth” — highlights the risk of the app defaulting to a cheap intersection of Omegle, Wondery and just your average-joe conference line.
Figure 1: Quality Erosion At Scale Curve
Networking
This idea of quality conversation is no doubt their main value proposition — and one the team touts loudly, but there is also the whispered promise of networking and interaction with those at large companies, celebrities, and influencers. I have a problem with this statement. Let us first define networking in two ways — might be another oversimplification but bear with me.
- To expand who you know;
- To advance your professional prospects or interact with people of interest
The first category, to expand who you know might very well be true. As you interact with moderators, communities and send in your two-cents in a discussion room, you will inevitably, if you interact consistently enough, grow who you know.
But the second category, to advance your professional prospects or interact with people of interest is the incentive to join that may be baseless. As highlighted in Figure 1 re: Quality Erosion At Scale Curve — we know that logically as more of the public flock to the platform the ratio that may have once been 1 Celebrity: 1,000 “Normal Folks” inevitability takes a Falcon 9 growth, 10x’d to discouragingly 1 Celebrity: 10,000+ “Normal Folks”.
Let’s look at Figure 2 below, and fast-forward to a global adoption of Clubhouse, when we hop-on the platform and look to interact with thought-leaders and join rooms of interest, here is what we will inevitably be exposed to:
A) People-of-interest;
B) “Equal” to us folks (social currency — ex: equal to us online presence, professional achievements — role);
C) Folks looking to network with you (think students or folks in a role 1-degree below you)
Naturally, we would love the majority of interactions for networking with A, and a few B — yet what we will find is that it will inevitably be “all” with B — or at extreme levels with none-of-them and just an aimless collection of folks with vastly-different careers, objectives, interests (which may be the point! hmmm).
Figure 2: Exposure Allocations At Scale
Monetization
Monetization of social platforms have taken many forms from Twitch dono’s and subscribers, to Tik Tok’s Creator Fund. The way creatives get paid continue to “change with the times” (might be a Van McCoy song). So how will money flow in Clubhouse? Let’s take a look at the platform dynamics in Figure 3, and potential revenue streams.
A) Content Providers — Industry thought-leaders. Similar to “free” podcasts found on Spotify or any platform, we know these really aren’t free. We are subjected to in-podcast sponsor shoutouts. It will be interesting to see if well-followed content providers will start to monetize their following this way.
B) *Potential Rev. Stream* Paid brand content (think Nike paying Clubhouse for the opportunity to host a lifestyle room with in-room brand advertisements, Clubhouse promises x amount of listeners).
C) The Clubhouse platform guarded by D and E from F.
D) The army of Mods or Moderators and Room Administrators (A good distinction is wrote by the OG of Mods and Admins, Discord, here) who protect the content of A and B, limiting users on C. Here is an opportunity for providers of content of the Clubhouse platform to pay Mods and Admins for their services.
E) *Potential Rev. Stream* As users grow, it will be interesting to see if there are any gates that Users (F) will have to pass through to access the platform. A few examples could be a paywall for specific rooms, subscription based pricing for a specific room, or archaically … in platform ads.
F) We know now this is the User base (restricted or open entirely open to the general public).
As you can see there are many dynamics that are at play here, and many micro-interactions between platform, user, content-providers, mods and more. And, as the platform transitions into the public arena, I am excited to see how the team will monetize.
Figure 3: Platform Dynamics
Feature List âś…
Upcoming For You
This can be viewed via a running list or in calendar form and is simply a timeline of discussions that are upcoming for you to join and listen-in.
Explore
Similar to most social platforms, the “Explore” feature is a curated collection of people and groups to follow based on the user’s current list of following.
Hosting
Here you can easily host your own discussion room that is a) Open to all; b) Open to your followers / following; c) Closed to only selected individuals.
In-Discussion Features
Once in a discussion you can opt to leave quietly, or raise your hand to engage with the moderator of the discussion. User’s automatically enter as muted, and don’t have any control of their sound — the moderator acts as the buffer to control quality.
Thanks for reading! ✌️
Lucas
