The Five Phases of Clubhouse 🌗
Musked; Banned; Hacked; what's next for this Silicon Valley sensation
Like many, I recently wanted to try Clubhouse, mostly out of curiosity and admittedly FOMO. Fueled in part by its exclusivity, the invite-only chatroom network has grown like crazy since its launch in May, to over 9 million users today. 🔥📈
Behind Silicon Valley’s excitement for Clubhouse is the fact that it’s been nearly 5 years since a new social network last stole the show (since Tiktok was founded in 2016). Behind the world’s excitement for Clubhouse, however, are the promises of democratized audio, exchanges in tech, business, politics and culture, across cities and even continents.
I’ve been interested in collecting data and monitoring Clubhouse’s growth. On Telegram (another social network) there are multiple Clubhouse groups, organizing invite exchanges. Here’s some subscriber analytics for one of these groups — @clubhouse_invite.
Yes, the hype is big for Clubhouse. Within two days (Feb 24 to Feb 26) the number of followers of the @clubhouse_invit Telegram group jumped from 25k to 80k.
Some of these groups are selling invites for ~5 USD; others are strictly no payment allowed, operating on a gentleman’s agreement that after receiving one invite, you’ll provide two back to the group.
One of the no payment groups is organized through a google form to sign up, and a google sheets to track “who invited who.” Monitoring the master google sheets, I saw over 3000 accounts register for the invite chain on a single day.
The news headlines on Clubhouse are also changing rapidly (and drastically, from Elon Musk joining Clubhouse, to Elon Musk inviting Vladimir Putin). In reviewing Clubhouse, I want to capture the multiple phases and narratives surrounding the app’s growth.
That’s why, I’ve written five sections below, reviewing the platform from five different contexts! After reading my experiences, I’ve also attached a quick survey — I would love to hear your thoughts (especially if there’s a section that resonates with you)
Roadmap on the sections: a) Joining Clubhouse, b) Musk, and Clubhouse, c) China and Clubhouse, d) Clubhouse Hacked, e) Clubhouse beyond Silicon Valley
a) Text from a Friend (#Skip the Waitlist)
As an early adopter, you might have first heard of Clubhouse through a text from a friend. For me, it was a call from my sister while I was brushing in the morning. She went off about this “cool new app taking off in Silicon Valley”; I rinsed and mumbled a semi coherent reply.
After joining the app, I was immediately drawn to the ability to check “who invited who.” I was invited by my sister. She from a college friend who worked at Andreeson Horowitz. Elon Musk from Sriram Krishnan. Mark Zuckerburg from Lee Jacobs. Drake from Kaiya Wynn. Stacey Vanek Smith (my wonderful audio journalism professor) from me.
In summary, the platform has very low noise. In its early stages, it’s a gold mine for understanding people’s inner networks, to a degree far surpassing Twitter or Facebook.
b) Musk Chat Breaks Clubhouse Room Limit (#Silicon Valley Junky)
As a consumer of Tech Crunch, the Verge, Wired, Mashable, Business Insider, or some other form of tech media, you might have been alerted to Clubhouse when the richest man on earth — Elon Musk— joined on January 29th, and hosted his first conversation on February 1st.
I for one was super excited to listen in, and stayed up late until 1 am, only to be met with instant rejection from the chat room 😭 … Felt like college course selection all over again ...
Elon’s chat with a16z’s Sriram Krishnan and Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev immediately smashed the Clubhouse 5000 person room limit. Yes, it was 100% a PR stunt, organized by Clubhouse’s biggest VC cheerleader, Andreeson Horowitz. But it was also a smashing success, catalyzing Clubhouse’s growth from 2 million in January to nearly 10 million in February.
c) China Bans Clubhouse (for Chinese diaspora & language learners)
At this point, if you’re like some of my work friends, you might be getting, dare-I-say bored, of English Clubhouse — tired of yet another person teaching you how to “market yourself” and “grow your Clubhouse follower count to a bazillion with Clubhouse.”
Fortunately, there are so many rooms operating in other languages, like Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic etc. For the bilingual world, non-English Clubhouse was a new and amazing side to the platform.
As part of the Chinese diaspora, my opportunities for speaking the language have largely been limited (to my parents and grandparents). Chinese clubhouse was the craving I didn’t even know I needed; for the first time I had this incredible access to intimate and authentic conversations, with Chinese professionals of my generation.
Beyond my personal cravings for the language, there was just something about Chinese clubhouse that felt more powerful. Its content more substantial. Its delivery more pressing. Its every syllable in recognition that the next might be muted behind a firewall.
Occasional, I sat jaw-dropped, in complete surreality, from words that I’ve heard hundreds of times in English. It was like hearing words I didn’t even know existed in Chinese.
On February 8th, Chinese authorities blocked domestic access to Clubhouse. As early as February 1st, Chinese VCs, such as Justin Sun of the Alibaba group, have announced efforts to build mainland copy cat versions of the app.
d) College Grad Hacks Clubhouse (#I know how to code)
Last week, Clubhouse suffered a “data breach” with a thirty party application providing access to its audio rooms.
The aforementioned third party web application, OpenClubhouse made its code open source! According to the WayBackWhenMachine, OpenClubhouse stopped working by February 21. According to its Github repository, its developer Zhuo Wei is a former University of Washington CS student and Google intern. The same developer also made HipsterHouse, an “intentionally terrible third party Clubhouse client for web browsers.”
Reema Bahnasy, a spokeswoman for Clubhouse, told Bloomberg that the company has added “safeguards” to prevent a repeat of audio from their service from being accessed by third-parties.
In my opinion, until Clubhouse removes its exclusive “invite only” status, people will continue to try and build third party applications to access chatrooms (in addition to the treasure trove of networking data its sitting on). IOS applications are known for its security, but the moment Clubhouse releases an android version, I venture that squads of data scrapers will jump to access the network with android emulators.
e) Musk invites Putin to join Clubhouse
On February 13, Elon Musk invited the Russian President for a conversation on Clubhouse via Twitter, then adding “it would be a great honor to speak with you.”
Technologists, entrepreneurs, VCs, many inside Silicon Valley’s insulated bubble saw Musk’s invitation to Putin as a “neat stunt,” perhaps the prelude to another legendary PR moment for the app.
However, for the world outside, including some of my journalist colleagues, and many prominent Russian activists, this was appalling. The idea that Vladimir Putin could have a casual conversation with a celebrity, without any journalistic intentions, nor any accountability for recent events, like the poisoning of Alexey Navalny, was hollowing.
Grow as fast as possible, worry about the problems later
Musk’s tweet, in many ways, is an analogy for Clubhouse’s growth, and the inevitable conflict between its Silicon Valley roots and the world outside. Born in the Valley, Clubhouse’s Modus Operanti has been to grow as fast as possible, and worry about the problems later.
But like Facebook, Twitter, and its elderly cousins, Clubhouse will soon need to grabble with the same challenges of disinformation, misinformation, and trolling on our social media networks. At the tipping point of mainstream recognition, its M.O. needs change.
Your Thoughts?
Thank you for reading my review of Clubhouse. Once again, I would love to hear your thoughts in this quick survey, even if you haven’t used the app. If it works out, I’ll share some interesting (anonymized) results back to this community on a later issue of Brackets.
My Clubhouse is the same as my Twitter! @edward_the6. Feel free to reach me on either, or ask me for an invite.