- On Clubhouse, I feel like I could really be
all aspects of who I am, so I've hosted
parenting rooms, I've hosted Latino rooms,
I've hosted a gay room for LGBT people.
- Clubhouse is for comedy impressions.
You could be listening in, and one moment
I might be John Oliver, the host of Last Week Tonight.
Then you become Jeff Goldblum.
Ah hello, yes, yes, Daddy Jeff Goldblum, listen folks.
- Clubhouse is for everyone to get
a little bit of podcast, a little bit
of conference, a little bit of Twitter,
and a little bit of radio all in one.
- Clubhouse everyone, this is it.
The new audio only social media thing
that everyone is talking about.
But even though this is very much about audio,
I'm coming to you in video to make
this a little bit easier to understand.
Clubhouse is very much not about video.
There's no video over here either
in Twitter's Clubhouse clone, Twitter Spaces.
Both of these are very much about talking,
a lot of talking and listening.
So that's exactly what I did, I went inside these apps,
well, literally right now, to talk and listen
to the people experimenting with this stuff
and to find out if this is all a big deal
or just another passing social media fad.
So let's start with what this is all about.
(rapid clicking)
- Clubhouse is a platform that facilitates
real-time audio rooms that enable both
listening like passive listening,
but also engagement from the audience.
- That's Alexis Gay.
She's a comedian, a podcaster,
and an early adopter of Clubhouse
who's amassed over a million followers.
The best way to think of this app is like
a big hallway full of different rooms with virtual stages.
Walk down, OK fine, scroll down this hallway
and you see all the open rooms.
They're recommended based on who you follow
and what topics you tell the app you're interested in.
Join one and you automatically pop up
and start hearing what's going on inside.
You can also make a room of your own.
You can just invite a few people, or open the door
to everyone, which is what I did with Alexis.
Before I knew it, there were over 1,000 people in our room.
Usually there are only a handful.
I even spotted media personality Perez Hilton
in the audience and brought him up on stage.
I think this is like the real Perez Hilton, I'm not sure.
- [Narrator] Oh yeah, it's definitely Perez.
- Yeah.
Oh, he just raised his hand, should we bring him up?
The person who controls the room
can bring others up to talk.
When you talk, the ring around your profile photo blinks
and you can mute and unmute your mic here.
Everyone else is just a listener in the room.
You can tap the hand icon to speak or ask a question.
When the event is over, it's over, there's no recording.
In fact, you get this big warning
when you start screen recording.
I got permission to record all the speakers for this video.
Twitter Spaces work similarly, and looks really similar too.
Though Twitter went with the circle icon
versus the squirkle of Clubhouse.
So yeah, it's totally, totally different.
This purple circle here indicates that there's a space
going on right now that you can join.
Clubhouse, for the time being,
is iPhone only, and invite only.
Twitter Spaces is in testing and will
roll out to more people soon.
So that's the app, but what's there to actually listen to?
Well, everything and also kind of nothing.
There's a lot of rooms about business.
The social media business, the tech business,
the entertainment business, the business
of business, oh, and so much crypto.
- We use Clubhouse to spread Bitcoin education
and knowledge and connect with people new to Bitcoin,
and people who've been in the space for a long time.
- [Joanna] Corey Klippsten, the CEO of swanbitcoin.com
runs the Bitcoin Cafe, a group that has multiple rooms
that run Monday through Friday, 20 hours per day.
- [Corey] In the short term, affecting the market
and going in the direction of the US dollar crashing
and Bitcoin, you know, taking over.
- And if the crypto talk doesn't
put you to sleep, there are lullabies.
- And so I just got on Clubhouse
and I was like, you know what?
I'm just going to start playing lullabies again.
♪ Maybe slow things down ♪
♪ If I could find father time ♪
- Every night at 9:00 pm, people show up to
a lullaby club where Axel Mansoor performs.
Clubhouse, which periodically changes its app icon to
a different user just changed the icon to a photo of Axel.
(rapid clicking)
But why not video, and why audio, and why right now?
Well, partially COVID-19 and Zoom fatigue.
Matthew Friend, a comedian who's gotten
really into the app summed it up perfectly.
- Kind of like how back in the '50s with radio
when you could kind of listen to baseball games
and that was your only way of seeing it.
It's kind of like that now where you're sort of
able to just listen and imagine.
- And that brings me to the biggest question I've had
through this whole thing, is this just a passing fad?
Are we going to really want to do this
when we can go back to real live events
and comedy shows and music events
and all of the things we used to do in person?
Twitter's betting that's not the case
and says it's more than a Clubhouse clone.
Dantley Davis, Twitter's Chief Design Officer,
told me about it during a Google Meet call.
We couldn't use Spaces just yet for this.
- To set the record straight, we actually
started thinking about Spaces in 2019
and as we were getting ready to ship
the group version of Voices, which is Spaces
as you see it now, Clubhouse came to market.
So Clubhouse gave us validation
that other people were thinking about this as well.
(rapid clicking)
- After spending time in both of these,
I think social audio is here to stay,
at least in some shape or form.
But with it brings old and new issues, privacy is a big one.
Clubhouse, for instance, is very aggressive
about uploading your contacts to its servers.
The company says users will soon be able to
use the app to delete contacts from its servers.
And then there's moderation, it's harder to moderate
hate speech and misinformation in real-time audio.
But I'm going to go with Perez on this one.
- Because I may be an old fart,
I'm going to turn 43 next month,
but unlike some of my peers, or friends,
when something new is popping, I get excited about it.
I don't roll my eyes and groan like ugh,
another app that I've got to try.
No, I'll try it out and see what it's all about.
- Plus, unlike me for this video
you don't need to do your hair or your makeup
or get some fancy Zoom background to participate
in this next wave of social media, fun or chaos.
Yeah, it's already pretty much chaos.
- I just got to say that when you
do the Howard Stern, it gets so crazy
because you get so deep and people
are very confused if it's actually him or not.