Introduction to the Clubhouse App

A new social media application Clubhouse app, which was initially accessible only to the IOS users is now available in clubhouse android as well. Clubhouse app is an audio-only social app allowing its users to host chat rooms. These rooms are either meant for professional networking or just chit chat with your friends. You can participate in the conversation by raising your hand, or simply you can listen in. It’s a virtual clubhouse, with each discussion happening on different topics in a different room of the said house. Its easy-to-use and minimalistic design is icing on the cake for its audience. Clubhouse app skyrocketed when renowned personalities like Marc Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Elon Musk entered one of the rooms, exceeding its 5000 person limit for a room. Timing has played an important role in the success of clubhouse app, right in the midst of a pandemic, Rohan Seth and Paul Davison Stanford university alumni launched Clubhouse  providing a great opportunity to make professional networking and social connections wherever you like.

Whenever we think of social media giants, services like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook come up to mind. People create posts, videos whereas the audience on the other side like, comment and share. However, Clubhouse app has provided a whole new place for its audience to hold a discussion on the topics which interest them. It can be a comedy show, book club, movie review, or maybe a debate on a social issue. Its intriguing USP has helped Clubhouse in increasing its reach.

According to a town hall meeting hosted by CEO Paul Davidson, Clubhouse app has 10 million weekly active users. The social media app is currently valued at $1 billion. With its $1 billion valuation, it’s now a Unicorn startup, joining the ranks of Air Bnb and Uber. Under the Social networking category, clubhouse  app is currently ranked 16 in the App store. An impressive substantial Clubhouse  app growth has been seen over time initially the platform had only 1500 users in May 2020. Besides user growth, other metrics which indicate how popular clubhouse is. Specifically, app downloads, as claimed by Fortune in January 2021, Clubhouse app has been downloaded 2.3 million times.

Clubhouse App has gained momentum success, but will it be able to maintain it in the long run?

The social media Clubhouse app is similar to live stream as it enables anybody to broadcast their own show and attract an immediate audience. The only difference here is It emphasizes more on group discussion. But as more and more people flocked to these apps creating engaging, and entertaining content gets hard. Often the quality of these rooms plunged due to heavy traffic creating a point of distraction for the audience. For most people, it takes seconds to decide whether it’s interesting to listen or not. Even if they lose interest for a minute, they’ll swiftly move onto something else.

Clubhouse app might face the same, which is why its growth is actually a risk considering other social media platforms’ approach. Whereas Clubhouse constraints to hosting rooms for a time being unlike other social media apps like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat tend to grow, expanding their network and boosting more engagement. But for clubhouse, every expansion leads to more risk in quality dilution, and reduced engagement. In this sense, the app needs to bring more modifications, a significant expansion to become the real competitor of the market. Being a live audio app it’s difficult to manage issues relating to racism and harassment as discussions happen online. Clubhouse app has come under scrutiny for the same. Also, at the moment the app doesn’t have appropriate tools to handle such incidents. The founder of the app says they’re working on making the clubhouse a safer space for everyone.

Marketing potential

Is clubhouse app a good fit for your brand? Well, apparently Clubhouse app has been a rage. But it totally depends on your business and the customers it deals with. According to some researches, some brands are able to attract listeners and ended up turning them into customers. Businesses have begun sharing sponsoring Clubhouse app discussions and sharing business insights with their listeners. That seems to be the key brand benefit in creating brand awareness. This feature of the app must have worked in the favor of the small brands for boosting engagement and brand presence. But it’s significantly important for the brands to spark the right topic of the discussion, maintaining an energetic room for the audience, then only you could be a real winner for your brand. Keeping pandemic in mind, influencers are even collaborating with brands to collect funds for COVID relief. But depending completely on Clubhouse app for brand success wouldn’t be the right decision for a while.

Clubhouse app has been working on several new options, including ticket sales, tipping, and subscriptions for the discussions happening on Clubhouse app. All of these updates could have significant potential for the Content creators, and brand to keeping their presence more focused on the right audience. It’s expected that Clubhouse will bring advertising options in the near future. As noted, some brands are already sponsoring some rooms, but to make it a bit more formal Clubhouse will likely launch a more systematic option, where you’ll able to pin the link of your website on the chat box. For some brands, their audience is highly active on Clubhouse so it gets easy for them to interact and more potential to generate sales leads from there. For others looking for a broader reach have to wait and see, how Clubhouse expands.

Scope for social engagement for Clubhouse app

Clubhouse app does have potential, but its future is uncertain yet. Many other social media apps like Twitter, Facebook are about to introduce a group audio chat feature. So, there’re chances that these big, famous social media giants might take over the popularity of the Clubhouse app.  In many ways, Clubhouse app might get replace as Covid situation improves people will head back to their offices and would not get enough time to participate in such discussions. However, it’s worth signing up to Clubhouse app and reserving your username for leveraging future updates.

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