Why is it “hard to find a code” for Musk’s popular social apps?

February 4, 2021 Savior

How long can we land on Mars?

Within five years.

What advice do you have for entrepreneurs?

Entrepreneurs who need verbal encouragement from others should stop trying.

As Musk opened wheat output in Clubhouse, talked about Bitcoin, talked about Martian immigration, and talked about brain-computer interface, this popular app in the U.S. in 2020 is known to more Chinese users. The combination of well-known sharers and invitation system made this app, which most users don't use, rushed to the forefront of the Weibo search list.

▲ Musk’s sharing room is full. Picture from: Zhihu user Reese.Ren

An app in the US is "difficult to find" on Chinese social media, which is an interesting phenomenon in itself. In the open discussion environment of Weibo, there is no shortage of doubts about it.

Isn't this all left over from YY?
This can't be done in China at all, one can be copied in three days.
Invite the fire maker, right? I want to show it when I get the invitation letter.
It feels like a short-lived product again.

What is Clubhouse?

Although it has only recently been known to Chinese users, Clubhouse has told everyone through nearly a year of development that this is not a short-lived product. In the latest round of financing, Clubhouse, which received a valuation of 1 billion yuan, is completely a "popular fried chicken", a rapidly growing new unicorn company.

Its founder is not an entrepreneur that Master says needs to be encouraged. Among the two founders, Paul Davison has made the photo-sharing social software Shorts and the geographical location-based social product Highlight, and the former owner of the other founder Rohan Seth is Google. The network resources accumulated by the two in the mobile Internet and social fields have also become Clubhouse's accumulated high-quality seed users.

In May 2020, Clubhouse implemented a stricter invitation system than today. At that time, the daily average number of users of the app was about 270, which accounted for almost 18% of the total number of registered users. Today, Clubhouse is not just a social product that has become popular in the United States. It is the most downloaded application by German users recently , and it has also gained a lot of users in the United Kingdom and China.

▲ Picture from: TechCrunch

The invitation system may be the reason why Clubhouse has received so much attention. When people post their Clubhouse invitation code on major social platforms such as Weibo and WeChat, or ask for an invitation code, most people want to find out "What is a Clubhouse?"

So, what is Clubhouse? Some people call it an instant voice chat social software, while others call it "audio version Twitter." But in my opinion, this may be more like a social app with a very good audio sharing function. Sharing is more meaningful than social. Here, strangers can also obtain useful and interesting things.

The reason why many people regard Clubhouse as a social software is because the invitation code needs to be issued through the address book. The friend you invite must be in your address book, and the invitation will be sent directly to the other party through the SMS page. Clubhouse will also guide you to follow the person who invited you and the person you invited.

But after this, you may not stay in the same room with a few friends often. Because there are many interesting chat rooms in Clubhouse, and many of them are people you can't usually talk to. For example, when your friends Jack and Jack Ma open a voice room at the same time, it is estimated that most people will find Jack Ma’s room more attractive. If you go late, you may not be able to get it in line, but your friend’s room. There is always your place.

Here, I listened to the story of the next-door company’s design director who started a coffee shop side business in Malaysia, listened to the food video creators talking about YouTube’s views, heard digital technology sharing in the local dialect rooms, and listened to numerous independent software in Taiwan Developers talk about independent software.

I don’t know any of these people. Through the Six Degrees Network Theory, I may be able to establish contact with these sharers, but they will not easily share this content with someone who has just met. From this perspective, Clubhouse’s sharing mode of “not seeing the person, just hearing the voice” reduces social pressure, and sharing like a chat with a friend gives the content a greater impact.

As an observer, you can raise your hand to speak, express your views, or you can choose to listen silently and leave quietly. Due to the invitation system, the current sharing quality of Clubhouse is relatively high. It is interesting and useful. It is a good choice to broaden your horizons and kill time.

▲ The function is very simple, you can raise your hand to speak

Many people will blurt out when they see Clubhouse: "Isn't this just a voice chat room?" Indeed, this is the essence of Clubhouse, but in the voice chat room, the product itself has also been polished a lot. A room can accommodate 5000 people, the interface is simple and the experience is good, the network speed is low, the sound quality is good, and the function of managing the room is very simple.

What they say about clubhouse

The invitation code of Clubhouse is really rare. Who is using this app and what do they think of this app? But we have also worked hard to find some real Clubhouse users to see what they think differently about this new app.

Wilson, founder of Aifaner:

I feel that it is an addictive application with a very good experience, from the bottom logic of social communication.

Product manager independent hzlzh:

Chatting in Clubhouse is relatively easy. Many familiar faces who have never talked before chatted here for the first time. The voice room comes in and out at any time. Some rooms are very close to the interactive way of the radio hotline, and some are more like offline dinner talk scenes.
Last night, I chatted in several live broadcast rooms until 3 o'clock in the middle of the night, but it may also be the first wave of invitation code users to try out here. It reminds me of the time when Zhihu was just launched.

@tifan:

Clubhouse is the social form of the new era. The sound quality is also very good, and it can be used on any other platform. Its form is to resist the broadcast mode of large platforms, but to many-to-many communication and communication, which is a decentralized communication.

Digital bloggers are always in the sky:

The feeling I experienced is that the Internet voice chat room can only chat with each other, and cannot communicate with each other at all. During the chat, even if the phone is locked, it can still operate normally. This is really wonderful.

▲ Picture from: Wired

Product operation mosaic:

I find it very boring. I entered two rooms in the morning and didn't know what they were talking about.
I personally don't have so much time to listen to this. The biggest attraction of this app may be that you have the opportunity to go into the room to listen to a certain boss, and do product growth research and pull new research.

Know almost user Reese.Ren:

As a social website that requires an invitation code to register at this stage, it has a halo that other platforms don't have. And at present, I see that it is not the people in the science and technology circle (various venture capital founders, scientific researchers, etc.) who endorse it, but the people who are influential in the cultural circle.
However, I think its model does have potential. It combines the advantages of zoom and text group chat, discards their own shortcomings, retains the human voice, and allows everyone to retain their own voice characteristics, but avoids the need to turn on the camera. upset. Concall, a communication mode that has been tried and tested in the corporate environment, can actually be easily popularized, casual, and flexible, allowing mass users to develop various interest groups on their own, so as to derive a new social mode that exists entirely in virtual space.

Product operation Ken:

I think it has something to do with topic, so I still have to look at topic before I am interested in listening. At present, I think the reason for the fire is that Musk did the sharing, otherwise it would not be so expensive. This kind of sharing is definitely very willing to listen to. I think it can be a product that pays for knowledge, which is much better than the 60-second voice experience of WeChat group clicks.
But at this stage, it is not like social software, more like instant multi-person communication software.

Science editor Hugo:

Not bad product, but not as exaggerated as everyone said. After experiencing the invitation system, many of the presenters are actually netizens, and they are not friends themselves. They just heard their names. This makes me feel a lot like guest forum-style sharing, but it will be much more interesting without public relations to control the content.
But there is a lot of interesting content. I even watch videos twice as fast. This kind of chat sharing does not have a very well-known character base, I may not be so interested. After breaking away from the invitation system craze during this period, I am not sure when I will open it next time, but it is definitely not the type that I use every day.

▲ Picture from: Neil Patel

Ellic, head of e-commerce:

I haven't experienced it in depth yet, I have entered a room, but I feel that the audio effect is really clear.

Aifaner CTO Ernest:

The real-time audio technology that everyone feels is very good is provided by Shengwang (a company in Shanghai);
The product level currently looks very rough, and the address book must be authorized before the next step can be dreamed back to five years ago;
The form of real-time connecting wheat + listeners, I currently cannot imagine a serious and relaxed form that meets the needs of people’s lives to match this. Real-time is too serious for time and it also challenges the integrity of content. I It is difficult to construct in mind how the content supply and consumption ends will align with each other.

Yang Yue, founder of podcasting platform New Radio:

I registered for ClubHouse late last night and the experience was very bursty. First of all, the voice quality of Clubhouse’s voice calls is incredible. Not only is it much better than making phone calls, WeChat calls, and WeChat meetings. It can basically be said that it crushes all the existing software that can be used for multi-party calls. The sound quality is close to what I use. Programs recorded by professional microphones, and no matter how many people are in the same room at the same time, and several people are talking at the same time, there is no delay or interference. It can completely become another independent communication method besides telephone, WeChat, and WeChat voice. It is a multi-party walkie-talkie that can always be online in real time. All social apps that can call before do not have this capability.
Clubhouse is the user's choice under a clear theme. Many media in this part understand Clubhouse as LivePodcast. I can only say yes or no. I am one of the earliest podcasts in China. I don’t think this is a podcast. It is a more advanced thing than a podcast. It is built with listeners. It is the social relationship, not the audience relationship.

Rebuild a Clubhouse

At present, it is difficult to say whether Clubhouse is a rising supernova or a shining meteor. After all, the invitation system and the top-down product promotion strategy are really easy to bring their own light, and it is easy to get a lot of attention in a short time.

While ordinary users are still wondering whether this model can be popularized, more product people have begun to extract highlights from this, and started to use more audio with the idea of "It is better to kill by mistake and not misplace". try.

Twitter has already begun testing its function named "Spaces" . As a voice chat room function recently established by Twitter, "space" only gives some users the ability to create space, and strangers also have the opportunity to enter this space. It can be said that this new feature of Twitter is itself a Twitter version of Clubhouse.

▲ Twitter's Space

Even the video app Netflix has launched a new pure audio mode in the Android version of the app. When watching a video, the user can see an option to "close the video" at the top of the full-screen video player, and the user can click on it to listen to the sound without watching the video. It can be said that this is a function that liberates your eyes, allowing you to listen to Netflix with your ears without your eyes.

▲ Picture from: Android Police

There are many similar audio innovations. Spotify has been making similar efforts. Twitter supports audio tweets, and TikTok is also focusing on more possibilities for audio. For these products that want to seize the audio social opportunities, Clubhouse is a competitor that cannot be ignored.

Although it still has problems such as lack of complaint channels and insufficient monetization paths, as a fast-growing audio social app, Clubhouse is likely to be popular from 2020 to 2021. When all major companies are mining gold on the audio social, the problem returns to the side of ordinary users: