Clubhouse: A New Social Media Platform?
1 A New Social Media Platform?
What’s Clubhouse?
Clubhouse(CH) is an audio-based real-time communication tool for multiple people (up to 5K). The theme room is the basic unit of user social communication. The room is set with specific themes to support various communication scenarios, such as supporting industry forums, theme salons, and shows. Since its launch last year, CH greatly promoted the rapid development of its high-quality social-themed activities with its control of user quality and its high requirements for algorithm recommendation quality, establishing a good starting point and tone for the product.
People come together to talk to each other, listen to experts, and connect. The motivation of people come to Clubhouse can be summarized as:
- Follow and listen: Follow influential leaders/clubs to listen to valuable information.
- Participant in the conversation: Launch conversation and share information with people with similar interests.
- Connect: Meet influential people or others with similar interests, and build social relationships.
How it differs from other products with social attributes
- Semi-immersive and full-stream information social communication Unlike Facebook/ Twitter, Clubhouse supports users to communicate in context continuously. It efficiently avoids “ Context-collapse”. When you join a theme room, information based on a topic is aggregated in a complete information flow. You will not get lost in the message. Compared with Facebook or Twitter, this is a fundamental difference. The latter does not support contextual streaming. Information sharing on Facebook and Twitter is fragmented and intermittent.
Also, multi-person real-time voice communication has a sense of reality, which makes people feel immersive. It is closer to human social activities in reality. Facebook or other similar products broke our complete conversation experience in reality. CH brings complete social participation, which makes users feel more enjoyable and satisfied. - More suitable for the exchange of thoughts. Some people say that real-time video streaming is also a full-stream social product, which can also avoid “context collapse”. Clubhouses are also different from these products. Compared with real-time social streaming platforms, CLubhouse only supports audio calls as a communication method. Real-time video streaming is more suitable for entertainment scenarios, such as Tiktok, which attracts ordinary people with various vivid and interesting video content. Whether it looks good or not is an important factor influencing people to participate. For Clubhouse, people socialize with each other just through audio communication. Without the intervention of visual perception experience, people will pay more attention to communicating ideas and concepts. For those who enter a specific themed room, he more cared about whether the dialogue content has substantial functional value and ideological value. Of course, because it abandons the visual perception channel that provides a richer experience, CH also loses some functions, especially the ability to enhance entertainment and social attractiveness through visual experience.
- More natural and relaxed social interaction. Those needing to attend many Zoom meetings daily will feel very tired. This is because people need to pay more energy and attention when joining a video conference. Audio calls reduce the pressure and friction of social interaction. Since video participation is not required, every voice call becomes more relaxed and casual, just like an offline salon event. Moreover, it can flexibly meet with users and join social activities. When joining a specific audio forum room, in most cases, the audience does not need to concentrate. For example, if I am also busy with another thing, I don’t want to miss a cool forum. I participated in it, but I didn’t need to be fully involved. In real life, this kind of social interaction that supports multi-threaded tasks is common. For example, I also chat with friends while cooking. The product supports this scenario well. This kind of multi-voice call is more natural and closer to our daily communication. In a real social salon, a person’s activity status may change from listening to chats to actively participating in conversations. We switch flexibly between these two states to ensure that we control our energy and attention more effectively. If the product cannot support this kind of flexible state transition, forcing the user to require a high degree of attention when using a specific product, the user is prone to fatigue.
2. User Experience
The user experience clubhouse is simple and straightforward, and the best point is the specific design is more modest and leaves space for further improvement.
Usage flow
Onboard: Clubhouses are not inherently open to everyone. Only when someone receives an invitation can he/she join. This model can effectively ensure the quality of users and give them elite attributes from the beginning. This is also the key to determining its community atmosphere and content direction. For new users, after joining for the first time, a profile needs to be created.
key usage flow: Once users in the default page, they will see several rooms (specific topic salon event) on the default page. Only when they want to explore more, they can click “explore more” to check for more room.
New users, can find their favorite topics, such as art, technology, etc., through the topic categories when clicking “Search” (located on the left side of the main menu). They can also search for specific people or clubs.
If a user follows a particular person or club under a specific topic, he/she will see upcoming events when he switches to the “upcoming for you” menu. It shows the activities recommended to you in the last few days. When users follow more people, the number of recommended activities will increase. I think the Clubhouse is more modest in recommending events, and it recommends very limited events. If the system recommends too many events to the user, then too much information will make the user feel dizzy. It’s a good point of design details from a human-centric view. Other good detail design includes that the user has the privilege to select how much frequency (or never ever) to see notification information, so users will not be bothered by too many reminders. Also, when users follow the club, they can see related activities under the menu of “activity.”
Information architecture and display
There is no complicated information structure, and the information level is relatively simple. It is worth noting that CH controls the quantity of its information display well. It shows limited information at first glance, and shows more content only when users need it. For example, it only displays 3 recommended rooms on the default page. When users want to see more, they can see more rooms when clicking the " explore " button in the page's lower area. Same as the upcoming page, it displays a limited number of events that will occur in the recent 2 to 3 days. This great design can provide users with more precise and limited content. Otherwise, if too much information is displayed to the user, it will impose a cognitive burden on the user and make it difficult for the user to choose. CH pays more attention to quality rather than quantity. This also puts forward higher requirements on CH, that is, continuously optimizing its algorithm to improve the accuracy and quality of recommendations.
Visual design
The light and warm gray background, the overall harmonious tones, and the simple visual design make the overall style not only unique but also quite humane (the reason may be that its visual scheme does not emphasize the sense of technology). In particular, the color scheme is simple and comfortable to look at, without losing aesthetic harmony. You will also find some interesting details, such as the icon of it adopting a real face. Black artist Bomani X is one of the key innovators of Clubhouse, and now, his face serves as Clubhouse’s app icon. Also, the icon will change a face when it releases a new version. It’s pretty fun and cool.
You can check the below article to see more details of the user experience guide to Clubhouse.
3. Targeted Users: Elite Social Circle?
The initial users of the club are often very elite, such as the addition of Elon and other industry leaders, which increases the club’s reputation and accelerates the absorption of high-quality users. At the same time, the invitation system can also effectively control the quality of users and ensure an effective relationship chain. Gathering high-quality start-up users is a good starting point, but it is still unknown whether the platform will lower the barriers to entry, open it up to more people, and promote the interaction of silent majority groups(audience). At least for now, it looks more like a platform for elites and high-quality adults for high-quality social interaction.
4. Types of Social Conversation Usage
The basic unit of “Rooms” of Clubhouse are group chats convened by users around a specific topic at specific times. In the room, different kinds of social activities can happen here.
Public-oriented (Open to all) event. It faces the public, and each one can join in freely. Such as A room hosted by a tech industry leader and exploring a popular topic most people care about. Generally, it will attract lots of people to join in. Compared to the offline forum, the on-site forum does not limit the space and the place, so CH has the strong advantage of promoting such a forum happened. At the same time, if it provides a better interactive mechanism, it can also give the audience the opportunity to have a lot of equal dialogue and discussion with the speaker.
Medium/small acquaintance gathering (semi-open). People who join the room basically know each, and easy to have more social interaction and chat. Of course, specific themes are still the key to guiding people to gather in specific rooms.
Privately-oriented(close). More private audio social gatherings. You can be with your family or specific groups of people and always feel each other between each other. The private attribute makes its information conversation highly personal and closed.
Up to now, the Clubhouse seems dominated by various elites or professional technical forums. But the clubhouse has great potential to support more diverse social gathering scenarios. The following are several interesting event types I found spontaneously created by users.
- Auditory-Oriented Entertainment Show /Party： People join in to show their talents, such as playing the piano, guitar, or others. The audience participates in entertainment activities. Since no video intervention is required, the performer and the audience can be more relaxed. These entertainment events can be large or small. For example, one event I joined was the pure concert The Bomani effect with a big audience size. While rooms during the day focused on business and tech, more performance-oriented rooms opened late at night that were less serious and more playful and fun. (The development of online social activities in line with people’s work and the rhythm of rest is also an interesting topic.)
- Silent Salon: People joined a room out of the same interest, but they did not initiate any audio discussions. They join to meet friends with similar experiences. Because they have similar professional backgrounds and interests, the room provides them with a place to find the right person. So, if you enter such a quiet room, don’t feel strange social activities are happening silently.
- Public Class: It is another type of use scenario that happened in CH. It is education-oriented and has space to grow. For this kind of online audio class, the audience cares about the professional topic and content, and they join in to learn sth.
If CH allows people to use the platform freely and creatively, it will promote the development of a rich social ecology. As the number of users continues to grow, it will undoubtedly promote more creative usage scenarios and content sharing.
5. User Activity and Engagement
User participation and activity is the key to ensuring the vitality of the platform. Considering different purposes, people using the platform for social interaction, user activity, and engagement, of course, will be different.
In terms of business and industry forum gatherings, it is vital for CH to continue to attract and maintain influential industry leaders and high-quality users. The industry forum room, its natural interactivity is worse since it has a hierarchy division of roles there. But even so, it couldn’t neglect the majority audience to join in these events. People who participate in a room with Elon Musk definitely hope to have the potential opportunity to interact with Elon or get a chance to meet or interact with another right one. It highly relies on the organizer and the moderator to provide a way to promote social interaction between the speaker and the audience. On the other hand, the potential design will be beneficial for users. Such as providing a mechanism to allow the audience to interact with others. If the silent majority lacks practical experience guidance, the possibility of interacting with each other is low.
More importantly, CH provides equal opportunities for everyone to carry out thematic activities. Even if you are not an industry leader or influential professional, you can still organize themed salons here. Online convenience allows ordinary people to participate actively in topic-driven conversations. This is why CH is more diversified and full of vitality.
6. How Clubhouse Knows Users and Its Algorithms
CH understands user preferences based on the information obtained from the below items.
- Your profile.
- People you follow, people who follow you.
- Your interests: It has more than 14 topics in the setting area for users to select, such as life / Hanging out / Knowledge, etc. Based on your preferred topics, the system “knows “ you better and recommends suitable events for you.
- Which clubs do you follow? Which topic are you interested in?
- Your third-party accounts. Twitter / Instagram accounts or any others shown in your profile.
Based on “know” you better and know, Clubhouse gives your personalized recommendation. For example, if the person you follow sets up a room, the system will recommend it. Or a room joined by your followers can potentially be recommended to you. Of course, algorithm recommendation includes multiple variable attributes and weights. For example, the popularity of activities is also a recommended consideration factor. The algorithm must constantly be tuned. The more you use ch, the more people you follow, and the more content the algorithm recommends will suit you better.
Also, the algorithm is not isolated to play its role. CH's current users are a high-quality adult relationship circle, and CH relies upon “follow relationships” to distribute recommendation rooms. A strong relationship chain of users and the algorithm determines the quality of the recommendation results, which means that the quality of recommended topics and content you see is guaranteed. Also, the more active and influential users(KOL) you follow, the more matched rooms will recommend to you. Moreover, CH pursues recommended quality rather than quantity, which, at least, ensures a relatively good content ecology development for now.
Future
CH will encounter all the problems encountered by social media products, such as whether to promote complete openness and free sharing of information, user privacy and protection, prevention and control of false information. I am more curious about the vision and value of CH. The company’s strategy and values are beyond the level of technology and user experience and profoundly affect the long-term development of the product.
CH seems to target high-quality adults and promote high-quality topic-driven social communication. Online industry salons are especially popular. If it is limited to high-quality adults, its market size will not be very large. If CH targets more different types of users in the long run, it will inevitably lower the threshold for users to join and the quality of content sharing. If so, will it affect its values and quality? I believe that encouraging high-quality and meaningful conversations can help CH establish more lasting and meaningful values. Promoting diversified social communication and creative social interaction will determine its vitality. A good balance between them will ensure the better development of CH and bring long-term value to society and the public.
Final words for this new phenomenal product, I hope Clubhouse grows well and gets better.
Rui Yang is a product designer and design-innovation leader in the Bay Area. You can find Rui on Linkedin.
