ClubhouseTea #001: Caphouse

The cap on this app during a panoramic is out of control.

Debut Edition of Tea In The Clubhouse! Sip while it’s hot!

• Cultural snapshot - week one of 2021 on Clubhouse

• Clubhouse Town Hall patch notes and aspirations (1.10)

• “One Mic” is not a moderation style

• Georgia runoff election vibes, DC Capitol Insurrection 21’

"I too was hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hood winked, lead astray!!!”

- Ja Rule (tweet, 01.20.2019)

The art of the scam isn’t uniquely a problem beholden to one particular social media platform; Facebook and Instagram have had to address problems with inauthentic user behavior alleging use and purchase of fake likes, bot comments, and fake engagement. However, the introduction of audio social as a medium has developed an ominous aura of daunting credibility, or the lack thereof, towards users of the platform who are forced to confront conversations that run eerie of confirmation bias, misinformation, and mob mentality.

Clubhouse’s mainstream audience of over a million people and growing has blossomed it to be the optimally perfect platform of potential marks; a scammer’s paradise.

So You’re An Imposter on Clubhouse? Now What?

With the advent of users continually growing exponentially on the app, people yearning to differentiate themselves from others has fixated on the social capital of an influencer, specifically what it means to be a “Clubhouse Influencer”. The value proposition of audio social is still relatively nascent with Clubhouse being the most notable example, but what is evident is that the aspect of influence with Clubhouse hinges on thought leadership: what it means to be an expert, being the credible and insightful spokesperson in the room while offering deference to new ideas.

It's not even obvious, for some of the newer users who are just getting acquainted with the app outside of their welcome room, that people who position themselves as entrepreneurial in nature can often be hostage to some of the more predatory users on the app, by goading their given audience into taking their word on it via courses, e-books, paid consultations. Even going so far as to ask startup founders to pay a fee prior to pitching a startup to angel investors? It’s indicatively clear that there is deception and false information to sift through on Clubhouse, some of it very sensationalist in nature to aggregate engagement and growth in Clubhouse following.

Cultural Snapshot - Week One (Primary Happenings)

• After the success of the Lion King musical production on Clubhouse, #TheLionKingCH, meriting over 10K+ people in attendance and finding itself to be Trending on Twitter as well as garnering media coverage from entities like TMZ, other original productions spawned on Clubhouse with open auditions including Dreamgirls, The Wiz, The Color Purple as well as drawing multiple parody rooms satirizing cutthroat audition tryouts (i.e. The Cheetah Girls, High School Musical)

• During the political turmoil of this week, people sought to create support groups and discuss events pertinent to what is happening in the USA, specifically the DC Capitol Insurrection in addition to the Georgia Runoff election, contested between Jon Ossoff v. David Perdue and Raphael Warnock v. Kelly Loeffler.

• Trump being permanently suspended on almost every social media network on God’s Green Earth

• Eric Nimmer v. The People - Clubhouse user Eric Nimmer, impersonating an attorney on Clubhouse

• Several high-profile D-level celebrities scammers (i.e. Tai Lopez, Chanel Rosegold) using affiliate deals and aggressively entrepreneurial rhetoric aiming to "make millionaires out of people who sign up for a course", photoshopped verification, photoshopped Forbes cover in the AVI... feels like LLC Twitter after Dark (Scam Likely should be a label designation, TBH)

• Earlier this week, multiple Clubhouse rooms were started on dialogue over DSPs like Spotify and Apple Music removing songs and catalogue due to inauthentic bot traffic and some of it aggregating third party playlisting; DistroKid CEO Philip Kaplan went in to clarify things and mitigate tension between artists who may have been affected by recent changes.

  • Furthermore, in regards to DistroKid, there was further tension on Saturday night (1.09.21) as an offensive room was set up in response to disgruntled argument between Clubhouse user @harlemz1stlad3 and DistroKid CEO Philip Kaplan. The room was titled “DISTRO KID ON CLUBHOUSE LYING”, a sensationalist clickbait title akin to corporate slander, and operated under the premise that DistroKid was stealing money from indie artists simply because they were issued ISRC codes by their music distributor. Kaplan entered into the room to try to alleviate any sort of misinformation that was peddled in regards to ISRC codes, but the baseless criticism of his background as a music-adjacent tech individual touched into an avenue of ad hominem, ableism, and violent rhetoric towards him, even remarking that his sniffling during the call resembled “sniffing a line of cocaine”. This critique happened despite Kaplan informing the speakers and the audience that he has Tourette syndrome. It did descend chaotically into blatant self-promotion of services from several speakers, advertising everything from courses to e-books, and the poor moderation did not help to clarify the fragmented accusations.

Cultural Snapshot - Week One (Ancillary Happenings)

• People still buying Clubhouse invites sold on Ebay, Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram for anywhere from $20 - $150 per invite (peak value was $7K for one invite on Ebay)

• Lack of verification and content moderation from platform allows people to masquerade as fake experts and authority

• Follow4Follow rooms/fake blue checkmarks (update: Follow4Follow rooms have now been banned and fake verification are considered violations of Clubhouse’s One Strike Policy)

• People creating spontaneous comedy improv rooms based on current events (i.e. Fake Kanye vs Kim Divorce Court ft. people performing as extras like Kris Jenner, Blue Ivy, North, Jeffree Star)

• Crowd-sponsored rooms (some rooms happening within the community are now seeing sponsored giveaways or cash prizes for contests like fashion competitions, moan rooms, etc.)

Missed the Clubhouse Town Hall today?

Here’s an outline:

During the Clubhouse Town Hall today (1.10.21), Paul Davison and Rohan Seth mentioned what was shipped in the past few days and emphasized DISCOVERY as the baseline of this update within the next week or two.

• Mentioned the Georgia runoff elections, DC Capitol Insurrection, spontaneous afterparties in tech, Y combinator community growing, reflecting over the past few months as trending topics on Clubhouse culture.

• -Clubs have been backlogged and will be processed, but are prioritizing onboarding clubs/series manually that have been meriting good engagement and consistency in programming

They also discussed what was shipped in the past few days including:

• Topic suggestions (the basic function that recommends conversations and clubs)

• Ongoing product development + improvement

• Topic directory (150 topics that you can browse, everything from pregnancy to AI to French, etc.)

  • Listing your topical interests in settings does not reflect a public change to feed/recommendations currently

• Smarter prompts (i.e. music mode, server load notifications)

• No follow 4 follow rooms and no blue checkmarks on public profile AVI

  • No actual verification solution currently offered on Clubhouse

Coming soon (this week/next week) from this upcoming Tuesday is of the following:

• further infrastructure support

• Audio issue fix (alleviates problem where your mic is turned on the moment you are invited on stage, will now arrive on stage with mic muted)

• Support tooling

• Server error notification fix

• Customer service made easier and accessible natively in-app

• Stressed emphasis on one strike policy on Clubhouse for trolls, violations made on Clubhouse ToS

• Pin messages on feed separate from notifications (follow, etc)

• Allowable change of phone number for user account

• Additional amendments on feed filtering, follow suggestions; showing people of interest based on topic, proximity of following, how active on Clubhouse, last active on Clubhouse, engagement on platform via rooms started

• Improvement on people suggestions, club suggestions

• Analytics for clubs (possibly) to include info gauged of the following:

  • % of members that engaging in club-hosted rooms

  • attendance of people based on time duration (i.e. stayed in room for more than two minutes)

  • member user retention, etc.

• Random room recommender? Possibly will allow people to randomly dive into a room based on topic (reminded me of the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button)

• Request for hiding certain rooms from feed by keyword/manual override

• Better detection of activity bad for the network (spam/etc)

Product features that we found interesting (that they’re thinking about implementing in the distant future):

• Whisper function: productize speaking to another speaker on stage or audience member without talking directly into the main speaker feed

• Instant universal translator: possible product feature to have conversations with people on Clubhouse that do not speak your primary language; easier accessibility to the global Clubhouse audience base

  • product development of translating audio speech also insinuates some insight that transcription is to be a priority in the product timeline as well

Select Questions from Q&A

Q: Why is the ability to have multiple sessions at once via multiple devices necessary or useful?

A: bad for the creator and control principles, negative experience of the speakers.

Q: What else do you have planned for the topic directory?

A: You can edit interests in settings. No associations between rooms and topics yet. Suggestions are “crude”, so we would like to consistently improve the product feature hence “informing the tap”. We want to broaden the topic directory to include identity, race, and location as well. Eventually, the topic directory will be overhauled someday, since browsing isn’t going to be the best approach for discovery at a given scale. Directory structure will be revamped in the future to include “an understanding of interests and topics baked into the product” (possibly inferring an embrace in search over browsing)

Q: I’m in follower jail and find that I can’t follow people. Will there be a fix addressed so I can follow more people? (Generic question about follower jail and follow limits)

A: The standard rate limits are not unique to you; it is the same for everyone. However, the culture of following has possibly changed to include respect of someone’s thoughts, so they will provide a possible input change into the rate limits.

That should be all. Tune in every Sunday for more coverage!

I’m on this bird app, Twitter, so tweet at me: @choi_clint. You can also find me on clubhouse: @clint.

Please share this with your friends. The hot goss is worth sharing with friends, so let them know that yes, Clubhouse is our beat. If there’s anything you think should be covered as a Clubhouse trendy/cultural topic for a given week, feel free to let me know!