Clubhouse is on everyone's lips today. Users are discussing this application, arguing about it, and doing their best to join the ‘elite club’ too.
Moreover, Clubhouse has been ranked among Unicorn startups (following the Airbnb and Uber lead). Its capitalization exceeded $ 1 billion, which deserves respect and even admiration.
The result of Clubhouse's success is the activation of its competitors willing to repeat the incredible experience of the new social network. Perhaps you should take the risk either, what do you think? In such a case, we suggest reading our article. We'll help you figure out how to build an app like Clubhouse.
But development isn't the only issue we want to touch on in our discussion. We'd like to start from scratch to clarify the situation from A to Z.
What is the Clubhouse App?
Clubhouse belongs to special social networks with a focus on audio chats. It's a fancy combination of talk radio, conference calls, and podcasts. Using it, we can listen to engaging conversations and participate if we want.
Actually, Clubhouse has become the response to the challenge of our era, namely, the pandemic. We strive to diversify and improve our remote communication, and the application provides us with such an opportunity.
Clubhouse history
The Clubhouse voice chat app hit the market at the height of the coronavirus quarantine, in April 2020. Its creators are Stanford alumni Rohan Seth and Paul Davison.
At first, things were going well, but not great. Everything changed for the better at the very beginning of 2021, when Andreessen Horowitz (the eminent venture capital fund) invested $100 million in the platform. And this seemed to have served as a wake-up call of some sort.
What or who triggered the situation?
Clubhouse owes much of its today's success to Elon Musk who joined the platform and conducted an audio chat with the CEO of Robinhood, Vlad Tenev, in February 2021.
The event turned out to be highly resonant. What's more, it was being broadcast live on YouTube (which is against the rules of the Clubhouse, but they decided to make an exception for Elon Musk).
Soon after Elon Musk, the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, initiated the Clubhouse discussion too, thereby further promoting the application. And here we go: Jared Leto, Oprah Winfrey, and other media personalities decided to join the ranks of the voice club members.
So, as you can see, it's not enough to make an app like Clubhouse... you must find your own way to advertise it. Not everyone would manage to win the attention of celebrities!
The main things about Clubhouse
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So far, the app has only an iOS version. Although, of course, Android support will also be introduced sooner or later;
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To become a full Clubhouse member, you should have an invitation from any other user;
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Conversations in Clubhouse are streamed in real-time and cannot be recorded. Those who break this rule will be blocked.
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Elon Musk's discussion posted on YouTube is an exception, as we mentioned above;
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Users must indicate their real name and be of legal age. Through, the service owners haven't learned how to control it yet;
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All kinds of insults and discrimination are prohibited (which is natural!). Moreover, every user may complain about a violation of the rules if he or she notices one. Clubhouse is obliged to analyze the complaint and, if necessary, take action;
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Clubhouse is some sort of antipode to TikTok. While the latter is focused on clip thinking, Clubhouse features are aimed at alive relationships and real, emotional communication.
Clubhouse Statistics
At the very beginning, Clubhouse has been downloaded 10+ million times. And the download rate keeps growing.
Why is Clubhouse in great demand?
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Unique novelty. Today there are many who want to build an app like Clubhouse, but at first, the service was one of a kind, which made it exceptional and desirable.
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The feeling of being chosen. Imagine an elite club that you could join by invitation or recommendation only. It is a high privilege to become its member! Of course, users were (and still are) eager to be among the lucky ones.
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Successful launch time. People yearn for live, real communication, pandemia turned all of us into reluctant hermits. So the new format of user interaction has come at the right moment.
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Strong technical component. Let's be honest: podcast platform development isn't an easy task. You need a strong team of experts who know how to build a Clubhouse-like app and make sure it works to its maximum. And Clubhouse had such a team.
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Minimalistic app design. The interface design is very simple and based on the use of emoji, without unnecessary details: these UI/UX trends are very popular now.
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No formalities. Video conferencing is a great way to chat remotely with friends and colleagues, but we still have to freshen ourselves up before turning on the camera. But with the Clubhouse, everything is different: regardless of his/her appearance and surroundings, the user can join any room and club in Clubhouse at any time and from anywhere in the world. After all, no one sees you!
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An example of celebrities. Celebrities set a good example when they started using such a great app (we've already mentioned a couple of famous names). Therefore, hypothetically, any user has a chance to chat with someone famous if he is in the right room at the right time.
How the Clubhouse Social Media App Works
If you prefer using Apple products, you can become a Clubhouse member. However, you won't be able to join the app without a so-called invite.
Suppose you have it and you've installed the program. Now you should choose your interests (say, technology, beauty, books, health, business, etc) so that the application could offer you personalized content.
How does one get an invite to Clubhouse?
After becoming a Clubhouse member, you get two invites that you may send to your friends from your contact list. Still further, by proving yourself to be an active user, you'll receive even more additional invites.
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Be careful when sending invitations to people you want to make users of this audio-based social networking application. The point is, you're not just inviting your friend to join the club of the chosen ones, you're also responsible for his or her behavior (at least to a certain extent). And if your protege breaks the club rule, both of you will be punished.
If you don't have a friend to invite you to Clubhouse, all you have to do is use the waiting option: in other words, you download the application and make a registration request. If you’re lucky enough, one of the club members might accept you into their ranks.
BTW!
Clubhouse invitations have become a popular digital product, which is being actively sold on eBay, Reddit, Craigslist, and other similar marketplaces. Moreover, prices sometimes reach several hundred dollars!
Clubhouse use process
The Clubhouse voice chat app works in a similar way to Zoom, except that access to the camera is unrequired (the program only needs access to the microphone). Anyway, the whole process of user interaction with the application is incredibly simple!
There is a room, which club members can enter. Each user present has one of the following roles:
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a speaker whose task is to conduct a dialogue;
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listeners, or rather, users who want to participate in the discussion. If they have a question or comment, they should use the raise hands feature;
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a moderator who makes sure everyone follows the rules.
Clubhouse social media app provides 3 types of rooms:
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Public rooms, open to anyone;
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Social rooms, available to users who have become friends on the social network;
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Closed rooms, which only selected members are allowed to join.
What else do you need to know about the rooms in Clubhouse?
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5K is the maximum number of users in any room. When the limit is reached, the room closes, and no one else is allowed to join the discussion, no matter how interesting and exciting it may be;
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At Clubhouse, users discuss a wide variety of topics, from politics and culture to entrepreneurship and social media. In addition, there are "silent" rooms, where users are looking for new acquaintances, and entertainment rooms (say, like the popular Truth or Dare game);
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The topic of discussion of a particular room is usually reflected in its name and description.
Clubhouse Business Benefits
If you want to build an app like Clubhouse, you have to understand why businessmen are interested in it (as they're likely to be your solvent audience).
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Professional expertise demonstration. Clubhouse can serve as an additional platform to prove your expertise and professional knowledge. The ideal option is to invite specialists from related fields of activity to the conversation to better increase the usefulness of the provided content. You may discuss topics that are potentially interesting to your consumers.
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New useful connections. Clubhouse also helps to establish useful contacts. Isn't that a good enough reason to start using the audio-based social networking app on an ongoing basis?
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Increased customer loyalty. And of course, don't forget about the opportunity to increase customer loyalty to your company. You just need to create a thematic Clubhouse community and hold customer-aimed events from time to time (events mean rooms in Clubhouse). Let's say, an automobile brand can attract consumers, car enthusiasts, to listen to expert vehicle reviews.
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By the way! Clubhouse allows you to engage a high-quality, potentially monetized audience.
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Time-saving. Time is money, and every minute becomes golden. And the format of communication offered in Clubhouse is a great way to discuss professional topics and do other important things at the same time. Nobody sees you, right? You are only being heard!
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Training. Undoubtedly, every application, every website, and every social network has a specific function: Instagram inspires and entertains us, Facebook helps us keep abreast of events, and so on. And the main task of a social media app like Clubhouse is to help people improve their professional qualifications, better their skills, and share their experience with other experts.
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Promotion of services. If you act smart, you get a chance to give your listeners, potential clients, valuable advice, and also advertise your company. Just mention your services in a positive way and explain why they're so good and why one should choose them.
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Extra income. Right now the opportunity to earn money is rather potential, but the owners of the application are working on new Clubhouse features. In particular, in early April, the company announced the launch of a special Payments feature (donations to reward creators, namely, active Clubhouse participants).
Clubhouse-like Solution for Corporate Communication
As the owner of a company, you could build an app like Clubhouse to help manage it in a remote communication environment (caused by the pandemic).
We mean the following:
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Conducting business meetings. Of course, you may use Zoom and other similar applications to communicate with remote employees, but audio-based social media programs have their own undoubted advantages (which we wrote about above);
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Improving workflows. Need to talk with an employee urgently? Surely, you can always call him, but sometimes it is more convenient to use the voice functionality of the audio-focused social network (Clubhouse-like);
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Bettering the skills of employees. Also, such an app provides endless opportunities for advanced employee training.
Features for a Clubhouse-like App
Clubhouse literally advocates minimalism and simplicity in everything. And this concerns, among others, functionality. That's why Clubhouse features include only the most necessary options: nothing distracts the user from the main application task, which is voice communication.
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Check-in. The first must-have feature of any application is a registration option. Surely, in the case of Clubhouse, the user should have an invitation from another member of the “elite club” in order to be able to sign up, but even if he does have it, the registration stage is rather unavoidable.
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BTW! When registering, Clubhouse asks the user to access his contacts. It seems there is nothing wrong with such a request... however, some believe that Clubhouse is careless about storing phone numbers (perhaps it even makes money from selling them to third parties). If you decide to develop an app like Clubhouse, pay more attention to the issue of user data security.
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Customizable personal profile. So, the first step is over, you’re registered (though, not necessarily you, any user). Now you have the opportunity to indicate your interests, follow certain clubs and people, as well as tell about yourself (to do this, fill in the appropriate field in the header of your profile).
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Be careful when specifying your interests, based on them, the application will recommend content to you.
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Search system. A successful program cannot do without a search bar either. As to Clubhouse, it provides a special feature to find people or clubs (so far, these are the only filters).
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Audio feature. This social network is based on voice communication (to be precise, voice chats), so microphone access is required. However, we'll talk about the audio component in more detail when discussing the podcast app development topic.
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Rooms. Of course, the Clubhouse voice chat app also needs a feature responsible for the communication space (the so-called rooms)
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Clubs. Users are offered the opportunity to search and roam in clubs, which are close to their hobbies and interests.
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Feed. The feed is a list of scheduled discussions (rooms), topics, and other things of the same type (with all relevant details).
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Invites. We've already discussed the issue in question, so everything should be clear here.
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Push notifications. Like any other application, Clubhouse sends notifications to users, reminding them of the upcoming start of an interesting discussion and informing them about other interesting events.
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By the by, Clubhouse users are allowed to choose the frequency of receiving notifications.
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How to Build an App like Clubhouse
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Analysis of the market situation. Research of the sort includes analysis of competitors and consumer needs. Of course, Clubhouse has no rivals yet, but they're likely to enter the market in the immediate future.
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Drawing up an action plan. It's time to turn your analysis into a concrete strategy. Among other things, don't forget to calculate your own budget.
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UI/UX. The app interface is paramount too. Make sure your application is user-friendly and modern-looking.
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MVP/MLP. The cost to make an app like Clubhouse is quite high, so if you’re on a tight budget, we recommend you start by creating an MVP / MLP.
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MVP is the simplest application model, which has only the most crucial features. And Clubhouse is a prime example of such a development approach (as you might have guessed after reading the previous section).
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MLP is a more advanced application version. Simply stated, you've tested the MVP on users and are ready to improve your product. Undoubtedly, Clubhouse features will also be supplemented with new options soon enough.
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Testing. Before offering your product (even its MVP version) to users, you must test it thoroughly to ensure it works flawlessly and smoothly.
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Launch. That's all, your product is ready to be published in App Store or Google Play (or in both stores).
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Collecting user reviews. Now you just have to analyze user behavior and continue to develop your project so that it fully meets customer expectations.
This was a quick rundown of the development process. Now let's get down to the heart of the matter to give you a complete understanding of how to make an audio social media app like Clubhouse.
Audio Component
Clubhouse cannot work properly without high-quality sound, because it is completely based on voice communication. So the app owners paid special attention to the audio component of their service.
The entire audio transmission process takes place in a few simple steps:
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When a user plans to set up a clubhouse Club, he sends a corresponding request to the server;
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The server, in turn, acts as an intermediary. Its task is to redirect the audio stream to all users who have joined the room;
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The server neither records the conversation nor stores audio content. That's why users who weren't present in the room won't be able to find out what was being discussed. They’ll have to be content with mere rumors.
Let’s say you want to build a chat app like Clubhouse and replicate your competitor's experience… what should you take into account to succeed?
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On the one hand, you have to find a server able to provide reliable and uninterrupted audio delivery to your users. On the other hand, there is no need to store conversations, so no special capacity is required from the server.
App Architecture
Another issue worth considering is the architecture of your application. We recommend using a multilevel client-server way to create an audio conversation app like Clubhouse.
If you follow our advice, you get a chance to take advantage of a broader set of development solutions. And the very process of building an audio-based social networking app would become more convenient either.
Other pros of a client-server architecture include the following:
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Ability to split the project into three parts: server (business logic), the client (mobile application), and database;
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Reliability and security of user data;
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Good scalability.
This approach also has cons, one of which is the need to choose a server with high performance.
Out-of-the-box development vs. Solution from scratch
Of course, the easiest (and cheaper) way to make an app like Clubhouse is using some ready-made templates and solutions. However, as you should understand, such a method won't allow you to get a unique application.
So if you want your project to meet certain special requirements, choose development from scratch.
How does Clubhouse Make Money?
For now, Clubhouse can be used without payment. However, in the future, the situation is likely to change; the owners of the service will definitely add several options to make the service profitable.
It is difficult to predict which monetization methods are going to be chosen, but we have some rumors in this regard:
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all kinds of paid subscriptions;
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monetization of business accounts (those that use the Clubhouse voice chat app to start their own promotion);
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transaction fees;
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paid promotion of clubs and rooms so that they appear in the first points of search results.
When monetizing a Clubhouse-like podcasting application, don't ignore other ways to make money as well, such as in-app purchases, in-app advertising, and the popular (and well-established) Freemium model.
The Cost to Make App like Clubhouse
If your budget is very lean and you cannot afford the extra costs, start by creating an MVP (which we mentioned above). Later, you’ll have a chance to expand the functionality of your program and supplement it with new features.
If you intend to develop an app like Clubhouse and follow its lead completely, choose just one platform to support. Clubhouse owners have picked Apple's OS, but you can opt for Android (depending on which devices your users prefer).
Development of an application with a minimum of features (for one platform only) will take from 1,200 to 1,500 hours. Multiply this time by the developers' rate and get your project cost.
Clubhouse Future
The podcast industry is still evolving, and Clubhouse is growing with it. And first of all, the following improvements are coming:
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Android support. The first item on our mini-list is pretty obvious, right? The iOS version of the application has proven its relevance, it's time to create an Android application either. And the founders of the company are already working hard on the mentioned task.
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Localization. The more languages the app supports, the better, and Clubhouse creators are well aware of the importance of proper localization.
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Increased security. Some people complain about the insufficient application security, and Clubhouse owners are planning to solve the problem by making app protection better.
Maybe Alternatives to the Clubhouse App
So, you've made the decision to build a chat app like Clubhouse. We guess it’d be nice to know your competitor first (besides Clubhouse, of course).
Twitter Spaces
Twitter began testing its own audio version (Spaces) in late 2020. At the moment, only the iOS version is available, and the app features aren't enough to enjoy the platform to the full extent, but the first step is the hardest.
Discord
If you love playing PC and mobile games from time to time, you must have heard of the gamer chat application named Discord. In early spring 2021, its creators added a new audio feature (Stage Channels).
In fact, this feature also offers users an audio space for live discussions. However, unlike Clubhouse, Stage Channels is available on all platforms, which support the Discord app (iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, etc.).
LinkedIn, a popular business social network, also wants to follow the latest trend and develop an app like Clubhouse (or rather, it aims to improve its own application with new audio functionality).
In March (2021), the platform owners announced the start of testing the audio communication feature. As stated in the announcement, the focus will be on providing a “unique professional experience”. Let's wait and see!
Slack
During the pandemic, many offices switched to remote mode, and Slack decided to simplify communication between employees in such difficult conditions and recreate the familiar work environment using digital technologies. Among other things, it copied a couple of competitive ideas, namely, Instagram stories and Clubhouse-like push-to-talk audio chats. With these chats, colleagues can exchange spontaneous audio messages.
Facebook got interested in the Clubhouse social media app too. Mark Zuckerberg even installed it and took part in a conversation about virtual reality (as we mentioned above).
After analyzing the dynamics of demand, the company began to develop a voice messenger of the same type. This happened in early 2021, so it isn't clear when exactly the audio feature would supplement the functionality of Facebook.
Spotify
Spotify has taken it easy and hasn't started developing an audio feature on its own from scratch. Instead, in March 2021, it acquired Betty Labs, the company, which created the Locker Room: a service allowing users to talk about sports by voice.
But since Spotify is focused on the music market, it plans to enhance the Locker Room to meet the needs of its audience in a better way.
Summary
Now you know how to make an audio social media app like Clubhouse. Wanna create something similar to it too?
