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“I sincerely asked for a Clubhouse invitation code and was overcome by curiosity.”

“Who has the invitation code for Clubhouse? Want to play.”

“Do you have the Clubhouse invitation code?”

.

These words have become another popular catchphrase in recent days instead of “have you nucleic acid ~?”.

Recently, a voice social App called Clubhouse has become a new social topic among young people, rapidly dominating the discussion boards of various social platforms.

What’s a Clubhouse?

What exactly is Clubhouse?

This is a “real-time online voice group chat” APP from Silicon Valley to China, nearly a month, mainly popular in the United States VC, celebrity circle of emerging social products. Dubbed the “Twitter for Audio,” it’s not yet on the market (sign-up is still closed, and only registered users can invite two new users, and they have to be iPhone users), with just 5,000 users in private beta, and is already valued at $100 million.

In short, it’s a live voice chat room. By opening the App, you can see who’s in the room, what’s being talked about, and decide whether to continue listening or simply join the group.

The Clubhouse was developed by Paul Davison and former Google employee Rohan Seth and launched last April. It is a combination of podcasting and social media. Compared to live video, this mode of audio communication has a low barrier. And reduced social pressure to appear.

In fact, Clubhouse started out as a podcasting product, but eventually it began to evolve into a social platform, resulting in the deep social media of “acquaintances and semi-acquaintances” in the form of voice chat rooms. On Clubhouse, Users can Follow each other, but they can’t send each other private messages. If they have to make friends, they can “open a room” for a voice chat, but at any time, someone will come in and even raise their hand and connect their microphone. This is really a new and interesting way for many young people.

How exactly did the Clubhouse become a hit?

In fact, the success of the Clubhouse depends on Elon Musk’s ability to “bring goods”. On The evening of Feb. 1, Musk announced on his personal Twitter account that he would be joining the Clubhouse at 10 p.m. L.A. Time to share online.

Since Clubhouse is an invitation system, users must have an invitation code to log in. As a result, after the news came out, the number of people who sought the invitation code for Clubhouse, both at home and abroad, was endless, all wanting a chance to “cloud chat” with the big guy. The move puts silicon Valley’s newly popular software at the center of a storm. Instead of just one or two Chinese chat rooms, on February 2, many Chinese chat rooms appeared.

In addition to hearing Musk share his thoughts on Mars colonization, GameStop, bitcoin, and other market frenetic topics, the Clubhouse also had “up-close” contact with all kinds of big names, and even had a chat room devoted to products, which eventually turned into a “twitter conference.” The chat room is more suspected to be the presence of Wang Gaofei, CEO of Weibo, whose microblog ID “between comings and goings” had appeared in it.

Such “close” contact, let many people have a kind of “I am so close to the big guy” illusion, attracted more and more users to register, have thought of this social software treasure hunting. What’s more, the Clubhouse is invitation-only, originally open to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and celebrities, with only two invitations per user. This “hunger marketing” method has made many people even more eager to get an account and start wanting a Clubhouse account.

So far, invitation codes for the Clubhouse have been sold for $100 on eBay and 188 yuan each on Taobao, a rare case of hard-to-get popularity.

Explode the audio social concept

After Musk brought his Clubhouse, he also brought his technology provider, Soundnet. On February 1 and 2, the stock price of Soundnet soared from $56.63 on January 29 to $74.87 on February 2, up 32.2%. Perhaps the success of Clubhouse will lead to further growth in the first quarter of 2021.

Not only that, the Clubhouse also popularized the audio social concept, and shares of lychee, Inke, and others saw big rises.

On Feb. 2, China UGC Audio Community Lycheus stock surged, rising as much as 90 percent during the session, and ended the day up 41.37 percent at $5.16. February 3, lychee US stock continued to pull up, hit a new high in recent years. As of February 3, Inke’s Hong Kong shares had closed at HK $2.83, with a market value of nearly HK $5.7 billion, the highest since October 2018.

Then came the questioning

Of course, domestic users who are at the forefront of social networking products also have fun and doubt about the Clubhouse. “Technology is not a special pass, often a shame (users were suddenly out of the room), voice lost frame situation”, “this is not the rest of YY play? “It doesn’t take more than three days in China.”

From a product perspective, Clubhouse has few barriers, with some calling it “YY live” with a new UI. It shouldn’t be difficult to recreate a Clubhouse in a short time. The core of its sudden popularity is community operation, not technology or product.

The Clubhouse understands celebrity and hunger marketing, and the quality of its seed users, its strict invitation system, and its ability to navigate the popular psyche have all contributed to its current success. It’s hard to tell if that success will last. Some investors said in the circle of friends, Clubhouse is likely to experience the explosion – low retention – low day of the devil cycle, countless once exploded in this cycle.

In fact, high-quality chat will always be scarce, and with the inevitable opening and geometric growth of users, the density of high-quality conversators will be greatly diluted, just as some similar content platforms have developed.

The “listen and burn” Clubhouse went viral around the world, becoming an “audio Twitter” for investors at the poker table. This “no trace of use” nature makes the platform full of hate speech about verbal violence, harassment, racism, sexism and homophobia, but is difficult to stop or criminalize for lack of evidence.

Add to that the lack of a “reply” or any ability to give feedback in chat rooms, and there is a serious disparity between the speaker and the audience. In addition to applying to speak (but may be banned by the host), it is very difficult for users to express their objections, and there is no way to prevent and prevent the spread of false information or discriminatory and insulting remarks.

Will it work in China?

As Clubhouse makes its way into the public eye in China, opinions are divided on whether it can successfully build its own fortress in China in the future.

In fact, there are plenty of companies looking to do China’s version of Clubhouse, with tech executives and product managers lurking alongside the Weibo CEO. Even Sun Yuchen, founder of Tron and CEO of BitTorrent who “likes to ask others for their dreams”, said in the Clubhouse chat room that he had invested in Two, a voice social software, to build a Chinese version of Clubhouse. According to the data, Two has about 500,000 monthly active users, with an average annual size of 3 million. There’s not a big community yet.

Although sound is infectious, penetrating and better than cold words, how long can this kind of phonetic company go? Where will the future revenue come from?

However, if this social model is embedded in existing social media platforms, such as Weibo, wechat and live broadcasting platforms, as a new content carrier, it may be feasible.

In fact, Chinese users have different usage habits from foreign users. Under the tuyre of short video and live broadcast, they have been well educated by cloud live broadcast and cloud voice. They are very picky about products, and their perception level is much ahead of that of the United States, so they may not be so fresh about this product. In addition, Internet giants will be eyeing this market, and it may not be easy for Clubhouse to replicate the success of the U.S. in China.

Even if the Clubhouse is open for Chinese users to download, it needs to be very clear how it will compete with long-established social platforms like Soul and YY, and how it will be well regulated before entering the market. However, social interaction is diversified and multi-dimensional. No matter it is text, sound, or video, there will be a market. However, it seems that it is difficult to bring disruptive response to the users who have come to two-dimensional video and go back to one-dimensional audio.

– END –

Author: The Path to Architecture Improvement, focus on software architecture research, technical learning and personal growth, follow and private message me “01”, send you a programmer growth and advancement gift package.

Thanks for reading!