Mega hype about social media apps: who meets in the clubhouse?

Monday, January 18, 2021

Mega hype about social media apps
Who meets in the clubhouse?

From Veit Schmelter

A new app provides plenty of talking point. This is probably also due to the fact that not everyone has access and the operators are creating an artificial hype.

Caro Daur, Joko Winterscheidt or Louisa Dellert: The celebrity density at Clubhouse, a new social media app, has increased explosively in the last few days. After the Twitter competitor went viral in the USA last summer, the hype about the app from the US state of Utah has now reached Germany. It can currently only be used on the iPhone, not on Android smartphones.

The hype around Clubhouse can also be seen in the top lists of downloads in the Apple App Store. Today, Monday, the audio application ousted the popular messenger service Telegram in Germany from second place on the list of the most frequently downloaded free applications. The messenger Signal is in first place.

Unlike Tiktok, Instagram or Snapchat, Clubhouse is not about image or video content. Instead, the users of the app come together in audio chat rooms and exchange ideas on predetermined topics. They range from politics to marketing and social media trends to the climate debate or sport. Users of the app can join the virtual discussion groups at any time, listen to the moderators and so-called speakers or actively participate in the conversation – without video. This creates a mixture of a live podcast and a conference over the phone. In principle, any user can open such a virtual discussion room and invite other users to join the group.

At the moment, mainly people from the business and startup scene, politics, the media industry and many celebrities and influencers cavort on Clubhouse. Whoever wants to take part needs an invitation. Without them, nothing works at Clubhouse. Users can be invited through friends and acquaintances who are already registered in the app. This only works via the mobile phone number. The fact that only a small group can take part at the moment gives the impression that this is something special. "This artificially created scarcity is an old marketing trick, but it works well and creates a kind of 'fear of missing out' for many," says ntv startup expert Janna Linke.

Criticism from privacy advocates

According to Clubhouse, this artificial shortage has a purely practical reason. The current app version is a kind of test version. If there are too many users, the software would currently collapse – so only a limited number is allowed for the time being. But soon they want to offer the app without "invite".

Another problem: If you want to invite someone else to the Clubhouse, you have to allow the app to access contact information from the phone book. In this way, not only sensitive user data could reach the makers of the platform, but also data from their environment, data protection experts criticize. The app records all the content of the conversation and saves it on its servers. This makes it easier to identify violations of the community guidelines, according to the terms of use.

Clubhouse's data protection concept, which presumably also violates the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), did not prevent many influencers in Germany from jumping on the clubhouse train quickly at the weekend. Over 1000 people gathered virtually in a clubhouse room in which the digital minister in the Federal Chancellery, Dorothee Bär, discussed the "Diversity Year 2021" with entrepreneur Tijen Onaran, journalist Niddal Salah-Eldin and many others.

Clubhouse was started in April 2020 and initially triggered a boom in the USA during the corona crisis, which is reminiscent of the beginnings of Whatsapp or Snapchat. The venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz, who also invested early in Silicon Valley stars like Airbnb, Facebook, Instagram, Lyft and Twitter, put twelve million dollars in Clubhouse in May 2020. The startup was valued at $ 100 million – at a time when only 1,500 users were active in the application. Among them were, however, prominent users such as the rapper Drake, the comedian Kevin Hart and the US actress Tiffany Haddish.

In the Clubhouse app, users can take on various roles. As moderators, you can start audio chats and bring other users onto the stage and give them the microphone. Speakers actively participate in the discussion. The majority of users are limited to the role of listener. But you can virtually raise your hand to draw the moderator's attention to you if you want to contribute to the discussion.

With the first big wave of clubhouse on the German-speaking Internet, a new wave of invitations is now coming onto the market. This can also be seen in the average prices that are charged for it on Ebay classifieds. The last fell to 15 euros.