Produced by: Sina Technology
Compiled by/Yong Yan
On the audio platform of Clubhouse, you can see many celebrities, such as Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, Kanye West, Demi Lovato and Mark Zuckerberg. On this platform, you can also find discussions on various topics, from Bitcoin to Buddhism, and from interpersonal relationships to R&B music.
Even so, the value of this application, which was born only one year ago, has reached 4 billion dollars, which is still shocking. It was previously reported that the San Francisco based company was seeking a new round of financing with this valuation. In January this year, Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital fund, bought the company's shares and valued the company at a quarter of that number. Later, it was reported that, Twitter It intends to buy the app at a higher price, but Twitter refuses to confirm the authenticity of this report.
So the question is, why is Clubhouse worth so much money?
According to the data of research organization App Annie, as of the end of March, the number of users of Clubhouse was about 134 million. In the past four weeks alone, the app has added about one fifth of its users. In short, it is growing very fast, although it currently only accepts invitation registration and only supports Apple But they seem to have found a gap in the market that they can fill.
Joseph Evans of Enders Analysis said: "It combines a variety of popular trends, such as audio, live broadcast and social networking. It focuses on something that we can't do. Because of the pandemic, we can't participate in speeches or have group conversations now."
At present, the application is not profitable, but this is not important. As Sarah Frier wrote in No Filter, Zuckerberg once insisted that Facebook After acquiring Instagram at a record price of US $1 billion in 2012, the latter should take it slow before launching advertising.
At that time, Markberg said that the reason for doing so was to let Instagram gain "the power to retain users", which was more important.
However, Instagram has gained such high value because both Facebook and Twitter want to acquire the company. This time, that may not be the case.
Evans said: "A few years ago, Facebook probably sent the takeover offer to Clubhouse. However, due to the competition review, Facebook has not searched the market for social networks that they can buy, so Facebook's only choice now is to compete with Clubhouse. "
Indeed, Facebook has just released a web-based application called Hotline, which allows the host to communicate with the audience through voice or text.
What other competitors are there?
Twitter has launched Spaces, an audio streaming function in Twitter applications. When it was just launched, this feature was only available to content creators, but the company plans to open it to all users later this month.
Telegram, a chat application, launched the voice chat function last year and improved it in March this year, making it more similar to the one to many chat function of Clubhouse.
Discord, a sleeping giant in the voice communication field, has just released Stages, which allows one user to talk to multiple people at the same time.
It is reported that, mainly for enterprise users Slack LinkedIn and LinkedIn are also developing similar functions.
Among these applications, many of them have more users than Clubhouse, and they also support more platforms. In addition to iOS, they also support Android and PC platforms.
What other challenges does Clubhouse face?
Content audit will become a major problem of the platform.
Clubhouse has caused controversy before. It is reported that extreme right-wing people used it to discuss women's fabrications of rape allegations. Racism, gender discrimination and anti Semitism also appeared on the platform. This kind of content has caused problems for the platform, and in the current context, it is something that any enterprise would not like to see.
Recently, after accusing social networks of bias and allowing harmful content to flood, American politicians threatened to cancel the legal protection of social networks given by a law called Article 230.
In the UK, the proposed Online Safety Bill may soon give regulators Ofcom new powers to ban applications that are deemed to fail to protect users.
It is much more difficult to supervise real-time audio than to detect text comments using algorithms. Although if users report content during the live broadcast, Clubhouse will retain the chat recording. However, if the user reports after the live broadcast, the platform cannot handle it, which increases the difficulty of follow-up investigation.
Another risk faced by Clubhouse is that its user stickiness is not strong enough. An early user of the service said that she found herself using Clubhouse less and less frequently because podcasts and other media content can better attract her attention.
Sharon O'Dea, a digital communication consultant from Amsterdam, said: "Clubhouse will make the process of creating content very easy, but in fact, the content itself is unexpectedly difficult to use. You can't share content, record or quote, and many times, speakers take a long time to clarify their views. In my opinion, this application does not respect my time. "
How does Clubhouse make money?
The traditional way for social media to make money is to put advertisements. However, the pure audio form of Clubhouse makes it difficult to place advertisements.
If forced to listen to promotional advertising, will users stay on the platform? If the host is forced to stop to have a rest regularly, or if the worse advertisement suddenly interrupts the discussion, will it destroy the natural dialogue flow, just like Twitch interrupts the video game?
Clubhouse has another option, that is, let the audience pay to enter the discussion, and then share this revenue with the host. Another startup named Patrion has established its own business through this model. In the latest round of financing, the company was valued at $4 billion.
Clubhouse has also introduced the mode of paying for live broadcast recently, but currently all revenues are owned by the host, and the platform has not yet started to collect share.
