Clubhouse shares plans for creators
It’s hard to believe that Clubhouse is a year old. Launched early in 2020, the pandemic provided the perfect environment for the audio based social media offering to thrive. The ‘drop in audio-chat’ app launched by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Paul Davidson and Rohan Seth in April 2020 was recently valued at $1 billion. In a recent blog they explained the story behind Clubhouse and that they had been working on various iterations since 2011:
‘Our goal was to build a social experience that felt more human—where instead of posting, you could gather with other people and talk. Our north star was to create something where you could close the app at the end of the session feeling better than you did when you opened it, because you had deepened friendships, met new people and learned.’
It seems they are delivering on their goal, still in beta mode, Clubhouse had 10 million downloads by January 2021 with latest stats showing its attracting over two million weekly active users as of January 2021. The main difference is that it’s a ‘club’ in that it is invite only, you can’t simply download the app but must be invited by an existing member. Rather like a conference call that you listen in on, each conversation room has people on the call talking with most listening in. The conversation rooms vary greatly depending on who is in control and how many people are listening and is showing it has the potential to be an amazing networking tool for music executives, artists, and others. Elon Musk’s session last month reportedly pushed the official stream past the app limits with more than 5,000 listeners.
The good news is recent amendments mean you can now join without sharing your contacts and users can share links to their profiles via the new Share icon. Links to clubs can also be shared via the “Share a link” button on club pages. It’s not surprising that brands are now joining in on the conversation.
Influencers are very much a part of the plans with Clubhouse giving the following update in their January blog:
Investing in creators 👨🏽🎤 Creators are the lifeblood of Clubhouse, and we want to make sure that all of the amazing people who host conversations for others are getting recognized for their contributions. Over the next few months, we plan to launch our first tests to allow creators to get paid directly—through features like tipping, tickets or subscriptions. We will also be using a portion of the new funding round to roll out a Creator Grant Program to support emerging Clubhouse creators.
Now two months on Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison announced the app’s first creator accelerator program on Twitter: “designed to help aspiring creators on Clubhouse host amazing conversations, build their audience, and monetize.”
If you haven’t yet, it’s time get invited in.