Clubhouse — A look at formats & shows
I first wrote about Clubhouse 3 months ago, reviewing it as someone who had never used it, but had heard a lot about it.
Clubhouse has now launched on Android, and I have finally been able to listen to shows, and so I wanted to do a more ‘proper’ review, looking at some of the formats, and what makes it different.
Many of the ones I’ve heard have been group chats; essentially talking with strangers either around a particular topic (music, business, crypto) or around a particular vibe (dating, ‘roasting’).
All of these offer something that you don’t get with podcasts, you wouldn’t really get with video, and that — importantly — you might not wish to do from an established social media network like LinkedIn or Twitter.
I didn’t listen to any for that long, but I think that is the point. It’s like a playlist where you can come and go as you please, and get a certain sort of chat. It’s quite nice to listen to when you are chilling, or for general information.
It is interesting to see new formats emerging (no one had done unboxing before YouTube), and given that Clubhouse has just announced a new ‘creator fund’ where they will be paying room owners to create shows, it’s interesting to hear what sort of things work.
Politics + Media 101 — 3 Experts from 3 Perspectives -
This feels like it is what Clubhouse was designed for, but it was very dull. When you joined it was hard to know who was talking, and what their background was. This was one where it would have worked better with video, where you could put captions in to introduce the speakers.
The Rundown — Crypto Talk
This is exactly what I would have expected Clubhouse to be. Experts discussed current price moves (esp Dogecoin), and took questions from new investors. This probably worked better than it could have in any other medium — if this were a text forum it would have sunk under the weight of people posting links, copying and pasting their arguments from platforms etc. As a Q&A it worked very well (but let’s see if Doge does go back to 60 cents)
The Pitch Room
Again pretty much what I expected Clubhouse to be. Anyone can come in and pitch an idea to a panel of investors. Quite good fun, but from what I heard the investors just trot out pretty standard advice about markets, research, etc. I didn’t hear any eureka moments, but I guess they do happen.
Film Talk with Kat & Kel — Could Your Life Be a Movie?
A variation on the pitch idea, and one of the strangest rooms. Film agents took pitches from members, where they talked about incidents in their lives and why they might make good films. Clearly this is going to attract strange people, but it was interesting for a few minutes. One ‘caller’ had such a low voice though, and a ‘proper’ host would have told her to speak up a bit.
Roast Club — Roast Room
This took the popular American ‘roast’ tradition, and had funny (ish) panel members taking the piss out of people in the audience, based on their profile pic, and bio details. ‘You’re probably the sort of woman who…’ etc. I can see people tuning into this for a few minutes if they were driving somewhere or had just come back from a night out.
Single in the City — Shoot Your Shot weekend w the Sexiest Singles on CH
Singles pitch themselves to the room. Compared to location-based apps it seems like a long-shot, but it would be great group therapy if you were starting out, or just wanted to chat to people about your profile, or get a bit of a confidence boost.
Meditation Room: Sound Spa: Floating, Weightless, Recalibrate with Art
Meditation music, with little speech, You get a sense of being in a ‘room’ though, rather than just doing it on your own.
SNL w Keegan-Michael Key
People listening to SNL as it went out, and chatting. Not many people in this room, but again you can imagine it working as an alternative to live-tweeting a show. (Keegan-Michael Key was that week’s presenter of SNL, rather than appearing in the room.)
So in summary — It is fun to dip in and out of, but there was nothing that I would want to listen to from the beginning, or make a point of catching every week.
However, there are clearly some very engaged users, and it offers something very different to what is currently available.
With many of the formats there is an advantage to being relatively anonymous on the site, rather than having several years of posts etc as you would get if the rooms were part of Twitter.
However I honestly don’t know whether there is a market in this (but you can say that for the early days of most social networks).
