Clubhouse has recently become very popular. People are asking around for invitation code to join the chat room. You may ask, what exactly does Clubhouse provide? It’s just chatting, like making a multi person voice call. The difference is that the chat room on Clubhouse is open, and strangers can go in and out at will. It’s like walking around the campus of a university, where people are holding seminars in every classroom. You can listen to any seminar and participate in the discussion.
Clubhouse is not the first voice-based social app, and still in beta testing. What made Clubhouse so exceptional? Is Clubhouse leading a reverse trend of open learning, when people are used to short videos? Spending two weeks with Clubhouse, traveling from a chat room to another, I found three key features that make Clubhouse a potential leader of open learning.
Firstly, Clubhouse is decentralized. It creates an environment of equal rights in terms of contents. Before Clubhouse, almost all voice-based apps were podcast platforms, such as Spotify and Apple podcast. All contents were centralized and provided by professionals. Most users can only be content consumers or followers. Clubhouse creates an environment of equal rights for content, and there is no strict boundary between content producers and content consumers. Starting a conversation on the Clubhouse hardly needs any threshold. In a chat, everyone is relatively equal. Everyone can apply to speak on the stage. After the chat, there is no burden of “user retention”. In this way, it’s different from podcasting. Podcasting is more important for content, and Clubhouse is more important participants. It is like, education is moving from teacher-oriented to student-oriented. It is the users that make Clubhouse evolve.
Secondly, Clubhouse has fully exploited the social advantages of voice. One of the most special features of voice is that it can show people’s charm. Compared with writing, it conveys more emotion with better accuracy. Compared with video, it allows more imagination. Sometimes even silence can make a difference. In addition, voice has the advantage of a lower participation threshold. Writing requires clear and logical expression while shooting videos requires people to always consider their own image in the camera. In contrast, voice is much simpler, especially in the form of conversation, almost anyone can easily participate in a conversation. Voice is the closest form of human natural social interaction, and Clubhouse fully exploits the advantages of voice.
Finally, Clubhouse is quite restrained in product development, which brings quality experience and more like an educational tool. Clubhouse does not pursue full social functions, but keeps it as simple as possible. For example, Clubhouse has no text or bullet screen. Participants cannot “like” or “unlike”, let alone giving feedbacks. If the audience wants to participate, there is no other way but to open their mouth. This is a very pure social experience. Clubhouse doesn’t have any functions of voice recording, screen recording or playback. Everything happens in real time. Users focus on contents and contently only.
So, I am thinking, what if Clubhouse or a similar platform be used as an educational platform? It leads to open learning on top of mobile learning, which allows participants, aka students, to become hosts, or teachers. Real-time contents, instead of format, are the only attractions to users.
I am glad that you did followup on your A1 Nini on March 11. I seem to have missed your A1 from before. A lot of content has been created on this WordPress site for ETEC 523. I have never heard of Clubhouse before but I can see where ti would be a very powerful mobile tool. Many apps top out between 10 to 100 attendants. I would be interesting to see how many attendants Clubhouse could attain globally before it may crash. This is not saying one would deliberately want to break the app, but rather test it to its limits before the conversation is difficult to understand. Talking to 100 people all at the same time is not possible to recognize with the human ear, but very possible to bring in a digital environment with technology.
A very interesting concept, like turning your device into a ham radio. I would be curious as to how Clubhouse would protect it’s users from verbal abuse or filter inappropriate or illegal activities if everything is audio only.
Thanks for the analysis on Clubhouse, Nini! I’m an Android user so I’ve been left behind in its roll out, though I’m dying to give it a try.
I hadn’t realized there is literally no text, no subscribing, no recording, no permanent record of the exchanges at all. That quality makes it an incredibly open tool. It also likely won’t be the same learning environment day-to-day (much like this course isn’t the same semester-to-semester).
I have heard concerns about a lack of diversity and acceptance within some Clubhouse groups. For instance, some finance groups have been anecdotally accused of not calling on women or people of colour. Though under-represented groups could form their own chats, the non-democratic administrator role could fuel bias-affirming conversations quite easily. I’d love to hear your perspective or others’ who have used Clubhouse (while I wait longingly on the outside, Android phone in hand).
Thank you for the analysis on Clubhouse. I have been hearing a bit of buzz about it recently but was still unsure about exactly what it was. This is a very interesting new take on social media, gathering and the transfer of information. I know when I am teaching online, it can be very difficult to hear when microphones are being turned on by multiple people at once, causing us to have to stop the lesson and regroup. How does Clubhouse manage users giving that verbal feedback or asking questions while the presenter is speaking?
Hi Erin
Thanks for asking this important question! Actually, in each chatroom, there is an administrator, who would open and host questions after the presenter completes the sharing. I believe this function may evolve with more and more users joining in.