What Clubhouse Is Doing Right
By: Chardeney Mason
Tags: Trends, Podcasting, Clubhouse, Communication, Social Media

& What this means for podcasters and how we communicate

In my opinion, Club House puts the social back in social media. Now, I could be biased because I am a podcaster, so my preferred form of communicating is through talking. However, at the moment, Clubhouse is a new social media platform, and people are swarming to it like it’s the next stimulus check.

Before I dive into what the platform is doing right and my thoughts on how it can continue to perform well, I’d first like to touch on how it works for those who are hearing about it for the first time through this article.

Here is how it works

To put it plain and simple, it’s an invite and audio-only social media site. There are rooms that you can randomly hop in and out of depending on which topic you are most interested in. There is a stage that consists of moderators and people who facilitate the group or for anyone who wants to join the conversation. There is a section for other people in the room and a section for those who are followed by the speakers.

What’s interesting about the platform is the internet has done it again!

It eliminates gatekeepers from creating a hierarchy system and allows people to do what we were created to do. Connect and interact with each other.

Some of you might be thinking, well, how does it do that if it’s invite-only?

Well, I’ll explain. It invites only, but all you have to do is send whoever is in your contacts an invite, and they are in. Simple. At the moment, it’s invite-only because it’s called marketing people and the developers need something to create the hype around the platform, and if I’m really honest, who doesn’t want to be part of something that is “exclusive.”

Anywho, what I mean about it eliminates hierarchy is because once you're in, one moment you can be in a room with an old high school friend, and the next, you're on the stage talking to your favorite author about whatever comes to mind.

This leads me to what the platform is doing right.

It put’s the social back into social media. I often hear people say they have a Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to stay connected and up to date with people; however, most tend to get distracted on the sites because of marketing, capitalism, and a ton of other things.

Also, most of what people choose to share online are curated or not shared at all because of privacy concerns.

What Clubhouse is currently doing right is there are no ads, no visuals, and nothing to persuade you to buy anything, just pure conversation.

Also, regarding privacy, it feels like it’s the Snapchat of social media.

You can say something while conversing with other users, but you don’t have to worry about someone taking a screenshot of what you said or digging up old conversations from the past with the intent to use it against you later.

Now, of course, you will have those people who will try to create conversations to funnel people into buying something or channels where people are trying to record the conversation to redistribute for podcasting. But I think as long as the people using the platform and the developers commit to using the space for good and focus on creating the space for gathering and connecting, it will continue to do well.

The second thing I noticed they are doing well is users' ability to easily converse with each other. Yes, other platforms have features such as live, chats, DM’s, and Messenger, but it can be a bit one-sided.

Let me explain

As a podcaster, I talk into a microphone and share a recorded episode hoping people will email me or follow me on my other social accounts to connect with me about what I shared in the episode. To take this a step further, on Instagram and Facebook, you can host a live video, but you can only talk back to one person at a time, and the people who can’t join your live can only communicate via chat. If your fingers are not as fast as the conversation or if your text's tone gets lost in translation, it does not allow people to effectively connect and communicate. Other platforms also don’t take into consideration that people just might not be visual and text communicators. So for the people like me who enjoy running their mouth, this new social media site is a playground.

For now, it’s cool. I’m curious to see where it goes and wonder if podcasters think this platform will be the new wave.