Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk made headlines again. This time with an invite-only audio chat app Clubhouse But what is Clubhouse and what has Elon Musk got to do with Clubhouse? Let’s find out!
What is Clubhouse?
Clubhouse is an audio chat app that is part radio podcast, part conference call, and part Houseparty. It is a social networking application where users across the world are privy to exclusive conversations and discussions between interesting people on topics like technology, optimism and more. The app is just like your favourite podcasts like Joe Rogan Experience or The Sam Harris Podcast but with a simple twist. The app comes with an infused layer of exclusivity.
Clubhouse as of right now remains an invite-only app. One can’t just download the app off the app store, create their account and start enjoying the conversations. Just like exclusive real-world clubs, a person has to be first invited to join the app by an existing member. Think of real-world elites coming together, sharing their ideas and only a few lucky people being privy to their conversations, but virtually.
More about Clubhouse
When a lucky person signs up and joins Clubhouse, they would first need to select topics like books, tech, health, etc. This is similar to how the acclaimed music streaming platform Spotify used to onboard their members by asking them to select their favourite artists and genres in music.
The more information a person gives, the more relevant conversations and profiles the app would suggest to the user which they could follow and be part of in the Clubhouse conversation rooms. These conversation rooms are much akin to a conference call we all are accustomed to, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic when people across the world were forced to work and relax virtually. The person in the conversation room would hear a few people talking and most listening.
Unlike the gaming and entertainment streaming platform Twitch, where the videos are free to be enjoyed even after the streaming is done, the conversations in the conference room disappear after it ends.
But what does Elon Musk have to do with Clubhouse app?
Elon Musk can be considered the modern-day Midas. Anything the man touches sees a sharp increase in its value. From a single Tweet, Musk has been able to inflate the share price of GameStop and even the value of cryptocurrency DogeCoin which started as a joke.
Elon Musk was part of a Clubhouse conversation. After his talk ended, the userbase of the app almost doubled from 3 million to 5 million overnight. Musk hosted an audio-chat event on Clubhouse with Vlad Tenev, Robinhood CEO. This event garnered heavy influx of audience and even maxed out the conversation room limits. With that the app is now one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley with a valuation of $1 billion.
Musk spoke in one of the episodes of Clubhouse’s talk show called “The Good Time Show”. The show tries to bridge the gap between tech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs by giving both parties a chance to have a peer-to-peer conversation. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and entrepreneurs to the kin have been skeptical when it comes to speaking with the media. But since “The Good Time Show” offers a peer-to-peer communication platform where consumers can actually hear the tech giants talk without media biases, it has drawn out the elusive CEOs into public conversations.
The show is hosted by Aarthi Ramamurthy who is a Facebook employee and Sriram Krishnan, her husband, who has previously served at Twitter, Snapchat and Facebook. The show focuses on organic conversations that range from cryptocurrencies, environment, capitalism and startups.
The show offered Elon Musk a safe space to share his perspectives on the development of Neuralink. In the conversation, he spoke about a monkey operating a videogame using a chimp implant. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, also came as a guest on the show and discussed his idea for Facebook’s Reality Labs Group that works on AR and VR platforms.
How do I sign-up on Clubhouse?
To get on this exclusive platform, an existing Clubhouse user has to invite you from their app which will give you a secret access point to set your account. Once invited, you’ll receive a link on your phone number, directing to the sign-up page.
But what makes the app super-exclusive is the fact that the Clubhouse users can’t just send invites to each and every single one of their friends. As of now, the existing users can only invite 2 people. However, the app creators in a blog post recently announced that their goal for 2021 is to complete the beta stage and eventually “open up Clubhouse to the whole world”.
