Clubhouse is getting Zucked over
But platforms copying Clubhouse might be the least of its problems
At this point unless you are hidden under a 3 month old crusty mask on the side of the road, you have heard of Clubhouse. Maybe you even read my post on how it could be a fun way to do happy hours with your company.
Well, what you may not be so familiar with is all the competitors that are launching some knock-off version of it.
The list is quite extensive
Spotify - acquired a formidable competitor
Twitter - their version Spaces is in beta with Android users
Slack - CEO announced the copycat while speaking on Clubhouse (got em)
Telegram - improved their voice chat to have the same capabilities
LinkedIn - obvious one since CH has become the new LinkedIn DMs
Discord - kind of a shocker they didn’t come out with this first
Signal - okay they haven’t yet, but I bet it’s coming soon
But of course the tech-daddy of them all, Facebook is rumored to be launching a Clubhouse like experience as well.
This is kinda Mark’s thing. Whether it’s adding Stories to compete with Snapchat, IG Live to be like Periscope, or heck just the idea for Facebook in the first place and we all know how that ended.
While obviously he wasn’t the first entreprenuer to take an idea and just make it better, he seemed to be the one who showed us all that it can be done without much negative pushback from the market.
But Clubhouse is really just a feature
These other providers have the benefit of a wide array of offerings and can use the group voice/Zoombomb method as a way to improve their current offering.
Clubhouse is going to need to look to expand their services in some innovative ways to provide a differentiated experience because I think just chit-chatting all day is only going to keep users so interested for so long.
There’s lots of others audio-focused options they could start investing heavily in to prevent users & hosts from hopping over to a competitor. Few I like are
Live concerts for up & coming artists
Sports press conferences in a specific niche
Earnings calls for hip companies looking to hear from their customers
The biggest wins for Clubhouse so far have come from high profile names getting on the platform to talk shop (Zuckerberg included) and they have moved to lock in these top creators to host their shows.
This means big spending for a tool that is currently pre-revenue but is valued at $1B from a $100M raise (OMG that’s so SF)
My commute into the office is ~15 minutes and I recently started listening to the Robinhood Snacks Daily podcast which is equally almost 15 minutes. Every morning they breakdown 3 topics in the market and frequently discuss the build vs. buy argument they affectionately call “Zucking”
Give their episode a listen and let me know what you think!