With the emergence of a global pandemic, the social media world saw a rise in influencers interested in doing live chats with their followers to stay connected, and possibly create another medium of earning money through social media. Mainly used for visual content, even IG Live has become popular during the lockdown, and the sound-based platforms stole the show from visuals. We even wrote about the rise of livestreams a few months into the lockdown.
Now there is a new player in the game: Clubhouse. The new, invite only, podcast-ish platform allows people to create rooms to talk about anything and everything in a nutshell. It is solely based on sound, so no visuals are required to join a room or the platform. As it’s an invite-only platform, it also gives an exclusive feeling to members, to be honest everyone is after the invite lately.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 31, 2021
But how did Clubhouse get so popular in such a short time, and wasn’t received as cringy as some other new platforms are? We can count a few factors here, such as the platform being invite-only, thus making it a place for mostly professionals, not having a visual aspect to it which makes it harder to judge by its cover, and the fact that no conversation is ever saved, so what happens in a room, stays in the room. But, all of these aside, Elon Musk played a big role in popularising the platform, breaking its records for the first time, and practically invading the platform for hours with the CEO of Robinhood Vlad Tenev. After the conference between the two, the platform’s value has risen up to $1 Billion, and the invitations are now “sold” on platforms like Reddit, eBay, and CraigList.
What does this new platform mean for Instagram & Youtube Live, and maybe even Twitch, though? It certainly is now a competitor to the mainstream social media platforms. Even though the platform is now questioned for user privacy, and users face some technical problems that the founders probably didn’t think they would have to solve so quickly into launching, it still seems to be gaining popularity rapidly.
We as INFLOW Network are also on Clubhouse now, organizing weekly talks with influencers to talk about their stories, hardships, and everything you wanted to know about them. Keep following us on our socials to be updated about the talks, and join the conversation!
