Ain't no crying in the club(house)... There's definitely no crying over at Clubhouse app, the buzzy new social media company that just hit a $100M valuation after raising $12M in funding. The audio app — which is still in beta — is currently only available to a select group of just 1.5K users (#exclusive). It's so stealthy that it doesn't even have a website yet.
- It seems kind of like Houseparty, in the sense that you can spontaneously join a "room" of people for a live chat — but Clubhouse is all about that audio life.
- As an audio-only social network, Clubhouse lets you tune into live conversations going on in "rooms" — for example, a discussion on how the pandemic is affecting prison inmates (led by rapper MC Hammer and venture capitalist Marc Andreesen).
The first rule of Clubhouse... Tell every reporter and celebrity about Clubhouse. The exclusivity, "novelty," and celebrity buzz behind Clubhouse likely helped it snag its latest funding round. TBD whether the app will survive past the hype.
- While "audio social network" sounds like a fancy name for a phone call, Clubhouse has the potential to be a place where people tune into live conferences about topics that interest them (minus the hassle of a Zoom setup). But...
- There's no lack of fad social apps that raised a ton of money on early hype, only to later drift into nothingness (even now-shutdown YikYak managed to raise $70M).
Exclusivity as a product... If Clubhouse isn't able to scale beyond its "exclusive" user base, maybe it can charge member fees. This membership-based model that leverages exclusivity worked on some "selective" social/dating apps (like Raya). It's the opposite of the free, "as many users as possible" ad-reliant strategy of social giants like Facebook and Twitter. But if there's no demand for the product, neither strategy will work.