ClubhouseTea #008: Being Human on Social Audio
The familiar yet novel immersion of storytelling is once again solidified in social audio.
Welcome to ClubhouseTea ~ where the tea is steaming and the vibes are intriguing 🍵
Cultural snapshot - reaching the conclusion of Black History Month
Clubhouse Town Hall notes will be included in this issue
#CHLOVESTEXAS raised over $150K to Texas relief efforts as part of the Clubhouse community
Silent rooms are in, silence is golden 💭
“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
- Philip Pullman
The entire world is warming up to the intimacy and nuance unique to social audio platforms with most of this newly-emergent engagement posited from audiences overseas. Whether it is rooted in political discourse or cultural identity, these one-on-one conversations depend on the urge to understand those of differently lived backgrounds and such wide adoption indicates a familiar appeal to oral tradition. The relationship of multiculturalism and oral tradition is nothing new and can be traced to ancient human origins as well as the indigenous cultures that occupied our ancestral generations.
Somehow, what proves to be of newly-minted revelation is how contemporary oral traditions and conversational appeal are being built in real-time on platforms like Clubhouse. It sometimes present itself as an accident that stumbled into success, when a decision as simple as not prioritizing built-in reaction emotes on Clubhouse leads to users blinking their mic on and off to express their praise. From personal experience, it does feel as if seeing a bunch of hot mics flashing on and off gives a bigger dopamine boost than seeing coded reaction emojis 💯.
Some Clubhouse users continue to hack adoption on the platform because this is a social experiment and because it is a social experiment that is being localized, in some cases, by non-English audiences. Once a group of people have access to a new platform, there runs a risk of a majority wins rule system as soon as there is an understood notion that there is no standardization on how to behave. Technology columnist Tae Kim of Bloomberg Opinion speculates on this potential of storytelling and that “Clubhouse’s success in areas with more autocratic governments across the Middle East, Central Asia and Eastern Europe… might help fulfill the promise of the ‘Arab Spring’ demonstrations from a decade ago.” We see this autonomy permeate into user behaviors and into Clubhouse conversation functions such as the silent room format.
Silent rooms are naturally what we have observed in Clubhouse as a knee-jerk reaction to bypass the ban of “Follow4Follow rooms”. Due to the overwhelming growth that certain users have seen on Clubhouse, silent networking rooms have been seen to simplify discoverability of user base and lodging people of similar industry backgrounds onto something like an event attendee list. However, it is not entirely the case that the silent room format on Clubhouse has served as a spam nature for the platform.
This week, the Asian American community on Clubhouse had hosted a silent room in protest of hate crimes committed against the group. While most silent rooms were used for networking and gaining followers, this was a notable case in which the silent room format used for protest.
Silent rooms can be an effective means of activism on Clubhouse because they “disrupt the feed.” While most rooms on the app are lively with conversation, these rooms are quiet, making users wonder what is happening. And as a result, this can help bring emphasis to different causes. Silent rooms, being utilized in this manner, possibly imply that we can see activism or non-violent direct action being utilized in a digital format like Clubhouse.
Cultural Snapshot - Week Eight (Primary Happenings)
Bill Gates on Clubhouse
Wednesday night began with anticipation as news made headway that the Microsoft founder and billionaire philantropist Bill Gates would be sitting in on a Clubhouse fireside chat with interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin. During a recent interview on the invite-only audio conversation app Clubhouse, the range of topics that were discussed shifted on why he still uses and prefers an Android phone, bitcoin, public health policy, climate change, COVID-19, vaccine distribution, and even a shoutout of LUPIN on Netflix when it came to what TV shows he had binged lately.
Celebrating Daft Punk
On Monday night, musicians, industry figures, and those who knew Daft Punk at heart convened in a Clubhouse room to discuss the French house duo’s retirement from music and swapped stories, memories, and insights on working with the robots. Led by Zane Lowe, Disclosure, Todd Edwards, and Nile Rodgers, the room took an interesting dive throughout on the last conversations about the future of music, artistic ventures, their ALIVE tour, and ideas that could have been possible for their albums.
The full stream for the fireside chat can be found here.
Storytelling: On Remembering Steve Jobs
On Tuesday, February 23, speakers that knew, interacted, or worked with the Apple cofounder Steve Jobs shared their stories in honor of what would have been the Apple cofounder’s 66th birthday. As a session dedicated to remembrance, speakers like CHM trustees Chris Fralic and Andy Cunningham, journalist Steven Levy, tech media pioneer Esther Dyson, special advisor to Jobs from 1998–2004 Mike Slade, former Apple CEO John Sculley and wife Diane, marketer and entrepreneur Seth Godin, photographer Doug Menuez, marketing guru Regis McKenna, original Mac team member Andy Hertzfeld, iAd director Steven Rosenblatt, and CHM CEO Dan’l Lewin all took their time to recount their favorite and some never publicly told-Steve stories.
3LAU Multi-Million NFT Triumph
“Why would you want to own an NFT by a label, when you can own it directly from the artist,” said Guy Lawrence of Disclosure during the pandemonium of the 3LAU live auction room. It’s not everyday that you see a juxtaposed collection of art and music translated onto digital assets and then sold for tens of millions of dollars over a digital bidding marketplace. The Clubhouse to NFT pipeline has been influential and quite the talk of the town for the social audio platform as the NFT auction proved to be a riveting example in the music crypto NFT space. In an installment of newly-minted NFTS, thirty-three (33) editions were rendered and auctioned.
Throughout the night, the crowd turned from ecstatic to euphoric as the bids turned from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to tens of millions. The profit margin for this outing was not expected and there was a definitive surprise in the air as 3LAU’s popularity was cited to be of an anomaly; his popularity with the crypto community for years has been mentioned as a primary reason why the bitcoin whales elevated his offering to a high valuation.
3LAU’s message to thousands of Clubhouse users tuned in for the triumphant celebration was of the following:
“Artists have power.”
Ambiguous Enforcement on Community Guidelines
On Saturday, Clubhouse user and crypto artist Jen Stein found that her account had been suspended from Clubhouse for a period of three days for violating Clubhouse’s harmful content policy for photos with her profile AVI. Her profile AVI had reflected a recent dildo art piece she had commissioned as part of a NFT drop. However, in regards to their rules and enforcement measures, Stein had been very vocal that she designs dildo art and that her photo has not violated community guidelines on other social media networks such as Facebook and Instagram. She had even been diligent enough to process her image through Google’s API for detecting whether her content would get flagged by social media content algorithms.
On Instagram, she has cultivated a healthy community of thousands of fans who follow her IG account’s various phallic-related content but finds herself occupying a different niche on Clubhouse with visual artist advocacy in the crypto NFT space.
In an blog post on her personal website, Stein expressess that “[HER] ART PROJECT [was] to reduce shame and stigma surrounding s3xuality thats expressed in any form surrounding the male gaze” and that she is “grateful to clubhouse… for [giving her] hope for the first time.” She attributes that “Discovering blockchain / NFTS has changed [her] life…. To a point where [she has] completely focused on educating others and bringing them in.” For a member of the Clubhouse community to be cited for a content policy violation with no warning or any sort of appeal system to contest the violation, it does leave the current communication a little bit more to be desired. What degree of enforcement should we expect on community guidelines? When does nuance expect some sort of merciful second glance? What is the line to cross?
On this issue, we should expect Clubhouse to clarify how it can do better by creators when it comes to the clear role of enforcement on community guidelines.
Cultural Snapshot - Week Eight (Ancillary Happenings)
We recently reported on Clubhouse Loves Texas, an initative jumpstarted by the Clubhouse community to raise money after the blizzard in Texas. Since then, the initative has raised nearly $150K for organizations in the state. They hosted a variety of events this week that brought together the different sides of Clubhouse all under #CHLOVESTX and the benefit concert had managed to raise at least half of the principal amount.
Fundraising on Clubhouse has been easier to process. From hosting rooms where people pay for a compliment, to embedding a charity component to a popular room, there are easy ways to make a difference on Clubhouse. More organizations should look to source funds from Clubhouse in the future.
On the last week of Black History Month, Black creators took the time to put on community musical theater productions on Clubhouse including the community production of Dreamgirls on CH and an original musical production, Throat Baby, The Musical.
Mopewa was recently hired as an Android developer for Clubhouse!!!
Earlier today, international and western Kpop fans took onto Clubhouse to discuss how KakaoM had removed almost a good portion of the existing Kpop catalogue from Spotify. Though, it is a dispute due to the license expiration and the need to renew the global licensing agreement, the pain point came for much of the fans overseas as some contemplated moving to other streaming services like Apple Music, Youtube, or even TIDAL. A full list of the songs/catalogue affected can be found here.
Clubhouse user Dani Deahl designed a Clubhouse Bingo card/drinking game. Experience it at your own risk.
Missed the Clubhouse Town Hall this morning?
Here’s an outline:
It’s the last Clubhouse Town Hall of February (2.21.21) concluding February and Black History Month. This one felt very oriented to recognizing the deeds of the community. Stephanie Saffa Simon, the head of Community + Content at Clubhouse, took a more pronounced role in the culture roundup to recognize Black creators on the platform.
Paul Davison discussed some exciting new features and took more questions this past week. Let’s dive into it:
Culture Roundup
Epilogue of Black History Month
invitation of several notable Black creators on the Clubhouse platform including Bomani X (The Cotton Club), Noelle Chestnut Whitmore (executive producer of The Lion King CH and co-producer for #CHLOVESTEXAS), J Edward Barnes (Black Book Club), Leroy Church (artistic director for DreamgirlsCH)
Bomani X moderated a special panel with the team over at #USvsBillieHoliday including director Lee Daniels and musician Andra Day as part of a collaboration with Hulu
Conversations spanned from talking about COVID-19 by black doctors, crypto, culture, African-American literature, the origins of techno music, architecture, film, entertainment, etc
Product Update
In-app club creation! About damn time!
Input on why you’re hiding room, for when a room is not relevant (will opt for better room suggestions and recommended unfollowing after hiding input
Feed filtration
Higher quality audio test
Links to your profile
New app icon coming soon
Q&A
Discovery
Q: Will Clubhouse be curating set of rooms that are popular but not within my social graph?
A: it’s generous to say that there’s a lot more work that we could be doing on discoverability. We absolutely will be curating rooms to help surface conversations that are relevant to your interests. For us to issue recommendations and for you guys to include input. Editorial on a global scale likely for Clubhouse.
Q: Will it be possible to access who is in what room based on profile click-through?
A: It already exists through the sidebar function, but will possibly include people you follow. Currently, only accessible for your mutuals.
Q: Follow limits? I am in follow jail, which prevents me from connecting people. Can you describe this dilemma more?
A: We have rate limits on people you follow. It’s 2,500 and they can no longer follow people for a time. Reason we have that is to prevent spam. If you think they’re interesting, then that’s justified but it should be mindful of follows. Better for the user experience. The right people to follow is dependent on use-case.
Q: People with a lot of followers that generates a huge audience when they enter. Why is that?
A: Visibility priority settings. When you join a room, it is elevated to people who may be in your follow vicinity in the hallway.
Q: Event overlaps. Some users are feeling frustrated by organizing substantive programming that may be included by bigger events (Steve Jobs storytelling event, Bill Gates interview). Is it possible to see these type of events with high visibility to be formalized on the event calendar?
A: We try to give you more visibility on other events that go on in the calendar and better tools for when to put on your show. Continuing to open up Clubhouse so more friends and followers on the app. We can’t control this bc event programming is controlled by the user community.
Room Features and Managing rooms
Q: Room design: what would it look like for Clubhouse and when would it rollout?
A: welcoming more people to clubhouse, improving in-room experience (improve hand-raise title, improve audience to speaker process, improve audio, moderators, audience layout, title change), but priority is on scale and discoverability.
Q: Is there a time limit for rooms? Should there be? Can you list start times for rooms so we can know how much time has elapsed?
A: we love when rooms are organic, topics change, people cycle in and out. Rooms can go on for a long time and new people can go in and out. Not sure why there should be a time limit on rooms.
Q: Stage limits?
A: Thought about it, no limit because seems counter-intuitive for creators.
Q: Once the self-approved club request function is rolled out, will pre-approved club requests be opted in?
A: Yes, we want all those clubs to be created and we can help them get set up right away.
Q: How can creators join the pilot program?
A: it’s a panel or focus group of a lot of the early creators on clubhouse. Pilot program to learn about features they wanted and etc. Goal of that is to open up tools and features to everyone. If there’s a question behind questions to, just tell us.
Q: What is one type of content you would like to see more?
A: voice is such a flexible medium. Something like the daily show. Global headlines, tech headlines.
Q: Should I grow the members or followers in a club?
A: If you host a private discussion, only members can see it. Other than that, it’s the total number of both members and followers that determine the reach.
Brands + Monetization
Q: How does monetization affect clubs (tools that allow creators to monetize admission to club, subscription, tipping, ticketing, etc.)?
A: Clubs will be paid directly.
Q: How can brands get involved? How can I create an account for a brand?
A: They do not support the creation of accounts for brands since Clubhouse is human-centric. Partnerships can be set up at partnerships@joinclubhouse.com. The direct facility for larger brands will be conducted by the Clubhouse team in which they will help brands set up their collaboration with a club or a certain creator.
Trust and Safety
Q: How is reporting investigated? How are ban periods determined?
A: Users are able to report things. If somebody reports something they listen a temporary recording of the room. Then, they delete the recorded audio. Internally with Clubhouse staff, they have a team that suspends and removes people.
Q: Does Clubhouse share data with a third party or do you plan it in the future?
No. We do not want to build a business based on ad or commercial purposes.
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. Lauren Huttner, our ClubhouseTea co-head, can be found on Twitter @Lauren_Huttner ~
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NOTE: We are looking for outside editorial for guest columns. We are happy to take any pitches at thisisclintchoi@gmail.com. If there’s anything you think should be covered as a Clubhouse trendy/cultural topic for a given week, feel free to let us know!