Clubhouse, a new social network in which instead of writing short messages or sharing images you talk live, is quickly attracting the attention of newspapers and internet enthusiasts in Italy, after it had done so in the United States in recent weeks. Unlike Facebook and more like Twitter, Clubhouse is designed to converse about any topic not just with who you know, but with anyone, or just to listen to others talking about something.
It has existed since last March, and is a kind of forum, but oral rather than written. It could resemble Telegram, if Telegram were made up of voice messages only, with the difference that in the Clubhouse there is nothing recorded: we speak live, asking to intervene with a symbolic show of hands. Instead of the “channels” of Telegram, however, the groups are called “rooms”.
For now, in Italy, Clubhouse is used almost exclusively by journalists, digital tools experts and people with a large online following (including Luca Bizzarri and Marco Montemagno), because it is still in a development version and you can make a profile. only if you are invited by another user. For the same reason it can only be accessed from an app (not from a computer browser) in English only, which can only be downloaded on an iPhone or iPad running iOS 13.0 or higher.
If you somehow manage to get a profile, Clubhouse asks you to register with your first and last name (“People use their real name on Clubhouse 🙂 thanks!” Says a message) and to have access to the phone book. In fact, each profile corresponds to a phone number, not an email address. Then you can choose your interests from a long list of possibilities, and see which of the people whose phone number you have are already on the social network: it is better to choose some to follow, because then Clubhouse proposes “rooms” in which to enter to listen or speak on the basis of who you follow. At a later stage, you can also decide to link your profile to Twitter or Instagram, and thus find the people you follow on those social networks.
“Our aim was to build a social experience that was perceived as more human, where instead of posting we meet with other people to talk” explained a few days ago the founders of Clubhouse, Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, on the social blog network. “We wanted to create a space so that when you close the app you feel better than when you open it, because it has allowed you to deepen a friendship, meet new people and learn something”. Conversations are not recorded on the app, nor can they be shared between users or downloaded, except with external tools that go against the idea behind the social network.
Based on a first survey, for now in the Italian rooms we are talking above all about the Clubhouse itself – even if only because those who arrive want to understand how to use it – and the topics that interest the categories of people who first had access to the social network: therefore journalism, communication and marketing, above all. Anyone, however, can open a room, choose whether to open it to all or just some people, and give it a theme. Among the most varied topics that appeared on Monday were, for example, “Musical events: will they be held in 2021?”, “TV series of which little (or too much) is said: what to watch?” but also “I'm looking for a Physicist who makes me understand the Big Bang”. In some there were fewer than 10 participants, in others more than 50: most of the users listen without intervening. The rooms can also be scheduled for a certain time, such as an event on Facebook, so that those interested can post a notice.
Each Clubhouse user has two invitations for other people to join, so the first way to create a profile is to be invited by someone you know who is already registered. It is possible to be admitted through someone you know even if this person has already used their two invitations: just have their phone number saved in their address book. In fact, once you have registered on the waiting list to enter the Clubhouse, all the people you are in contact with who are already registered on the social network receive a notification and have the possibility to “let you in” without using invitations.
Clubhouse said it has already reached 2 million subscribers and even in the United States it has a limited audience, which however includes famous people such as Oprah Winfrey, Drake and Elon Musk, the entrepreneur of Tesla and SpaceX. Musk himself put a strain on the current capabilities of Clubhouse by organizing his own room: in a short time it was filled with more than five thousand participants (a maximum limit that had never been reached), so much so that some users have in turn opened some rooms to transmit Musk's words with a second smartphone. A bit like when at festivals the popularity of a guest fills a room, and whoever stays outside has to be satisfied with the live video in the next one.
The great popularity obtained by Clubhouse in the last period – also thanks to Musk – has understandably also caused talk of its current limitations. One concerns privacy: Cybersecurity expert Carola Frediani explained in her newsletter Guerre di rete that, given that Clubhouse very insistently asks to have access to the phone book of those who use it, according to the data protection supervisor Hamburg would not meet the requirements of the European Privacy Regulation (GDPR).
Another limitation is moderation: whoever creates a room is its moderator and can give and take the floor to other participants, but there is no way to prevent the creation of rooms in which, for example, false information or messages are spread. 'hate. The topic was addressed in the American edition of Vanity Fair in December, after a user made unfounded or questionable claims about Muslim people in a room that spoke of terrorist attacks in Paris. Another user who used Clubhouse to say anti-Semitic and racist things was instead banned from the social network, following reports from other people, but at the moment it is not clear if the founders of the platform have a plan to moderate the conversations more.
