The Clubhouse has had an incredible year in one that most of us prefer to forget. The live audio application was launched during a pandemic; won over 10 million downloads for an invitation-only application and iOS; and it has been so successful that almost all social platforms want to copy it. Congratulations to the Clubhouse.
The company now faces its biggest challenges, however. On the one hand, the pandemic is decreasing and people may be more interested in socializing in real life instead of conversations facilitated by telephone. Anyone who advertises their yard as the Clubhouse’s next big competitor is right. But for people who He does end up wanting to talk to each other online, so they’ll have a lot more places to do that. In case you haven’t followed: Twitter, Facebook (supposedly), LinkedIn, Discord, Spotify, Mark Cuban and Slack have all launched or are working on their own social audio attempts – the space is about to get busy.
The Clubhouse’s main concern is that, as I postulate in February, social audio could follow the same trajectory as Snapchat’s Stories function: a brilliant idea of changing social media that remains present in all applications to the detriment of the format’s pioneering newcomer. And social audio is getting ready to follow that path. With the threat growing, it is worth looking at where the Clubhouse is most likely to encounter problems.
But first: what does the Clubhouse have to offer? It was the first to have social audio, and that is something. It already has millions of users who come to the Clubhouse just for social audio content, and that includes eye-catching names like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and other celebrities. Technology CEOs are even making announcements at the Clubhouse, including Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield, who announced his own company’s impersonator product on the app. The application generates news and discussions – something much more complicated for other companies to clone.
People have also created habits around the Clubhouse, which is a positive sign for user retention. The team also plans to launch a creator program in the near future that will reward its most dedicated users with revenue and resources to strengthen their programs.
And critically, the app was created just last month. The company recently hired Fadia Kader from Instagram to lead its media and creative partnerships. On Instagram, she worked with musicians to help them optimize their work on the platform. Presumably, she will do something similar at the Clubhouse. I’ve seen her in a room with Justin Bieber talking about her latest album. The Clubhouse has also hired Maya Watson from Netflix to become its head of global marketing, which means it will soon devote resources to promoting the Clubhouse, rather than relying primarily on word of mouth. All of these are important steps to keep the Clubhouse interesting and prosperous.
But the app now faces competition from some of the world’s largest platforms, which already have years of moderation experience, are available on iOS and Android and have huge and loyal user bases to whom they can send social audio. Some companies, such as Twitter and Discord, have already made live social audio features available to their millions of users with effectively the same interface as the Clubhouse. Anyone who didn’t have an invitation to the Clubhouse, or an iPhone, can now access the magic of social audio without any association with the Clubhouse.
Perhaps the most dangerous possibility for the Clubhouse, however, is the ease with which it can lose the big names on its platform to opponents. Spotify, which announced this week that it has acquired Betty Labs, the creator of the sports-centered social audio app Locker Room, plans to bring the app to Android, change its name and expand its coverage to music, culture and sports. I could compete directly with the Clubhouse for talent. Joe Rogan, for example, recently joined a chat at the Clubhouse and, although Spotify’s head of R&D tells me that the company is not going to restrict its podcasters from using other social audio apps, it’s easy to imagine the company encouraging the use of your own. Musicians like Bieber, who may have come to the Clubhouse to debut music, can turn to the Spotify app to maintain relationships with the streaming giant. As a reference, when Kylie Jenner tweeted that she was barely opening Snapchat, the company’s shares lost $ 1.3 billion. If stars like Tiffany Haddish decide to spend their time elsewhere, the Clubhouse will also falter.
At the same time, some of these competitors are specifically interested in creating a native recording in their app, possibly to feed the podcasting ecosystem and listen on demand. The Clubhouse hasn’t done that yet. Fireside, which was co-founded by Mark Cuban, allows people to insert sound effects, such as music, and record their programs for distribution on podcasting platforms, as well as later playback in the application itself. Spotify will likely do the same for your application and will rely on its Anchor software to handle hosting and distribution. The head of consumer products at Twitter said The Verge which would also allow people to natively record their Spaces. The Clubhouse did not build this functionality, limiting its users to just live conversations, which can be difficult to follow if they join them halfway. The collapse of the context will challenge all platforms with a live focus, but some of the Clubhouse’s competitors are already working to resolve this.
The stories made Snapchat a success. It was a pioneer in the idea of ephemeral content and brought back some aspect of authenticity to social media. But it didn’t take long for the functionality to reach the same competitors that the Clubhouse now faces. To make your business work, Snapchat has doubled its Android app, made it more accessible to new users through a redesign, and aggressively pursued content partnerships with media and entertainment companies. Now, it pays users to create content for its TikTok competitor, Spotlight, and it supports a growing ad business, but Instagram ended up winning the crown for the stories. The Clubhouse has not yet sought out advertisements or subscriptions, but this will be the next step in making it a self-sustaining platform. (Notably, however, its competitors, such as Facebook, already control ad targeting, possibly making the Clubhouse’s job of selling ads or accessing the platform itself more difficult.)
None of this means that the Clubhouse will not survive or build a solid business in the coming months and years. He just needs to stay in the conversation.