Clubhouse: The App That Everyone’s Talking About

You’ve heard of TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and more, but now there’s a new player in the game of social media. Clubhouse was released in April 2020, and since then its name has been everywhere. There are some very prominent and well known figures who are a part of this exclusive community. Members include Elon Musk, Oprah, Drake, 21 Savage, Van Jones, and many, many more. Unlike other popular social media platforms, Clubhouse hosts an invite-only audio-chat community where anyone who has an invite can host chats in their own “Rooms”. It’s basically like listening in on a conversation, a conference call if you will, among experts in their field and people who have started their own “clubs”. You can literally talk or listen to whatever and whoever you want.

So why has Clubhouse become so incredibly popular, and why has it now been valued at $4 billion after only one year?

The main traction of Clubhouse is the intimacy of the actual audio channels and the users. It’s live chats enable individuals to join real-time conversations and even join them to ask questions or just give their input. So technically speaking, if you’re in a “room” with Elon Musk and they’re taking questions, you can technically talk to Elon Musk (hypothetically).

Clubhouse itself possibly introduces a new change in social media, rather a change in how we consume social media. Rather than uploading videos, liking photos, or commenting on posts, we’re now starting to consume conversations not in person but through audio-channels. The New York Times even found that, “Media companies such as Barstool Sports have also set up Clubhouse accounts, and at least one firm has said it plans to hire a “senior Clubhouse executive.” So this isn’t just another app making its way to our phones (iPhones that is, as of now it is only available for download on iPhones and is in talks with being available on Androids).

Even though the app is invite-only, it has over six million users as of March 2021. Once invited, each person has only two invitations that they can give to whomever they want. People are even selling these invites on sites such as eBay. So yeah, definitely don’t brush off the growing popularity of the app, and if you can, try to snag an invite to listen to some unique conversations. Who knows, maybe you’ll even stumble upon a “room” with Elon Musk one day.