It took just a few weeks for Clubhouse to become the most downloaded app in the App Store. Its popularity surpassed even TikTok.
The peculiarity of the social network is communication by voice. Interest in the application was fueled by a certain mystery associated with the fact that not everyone can join it. An invitation from existing members is required. In this sense, the creators of Clubhouse, Paul Davison and Roen Seth, created the maximum intrigue, and everyone wanted to become members of a closed club. In less than a year of existence, the value of Clubhouse was estimated at a billion dollars.
At the very beginning, only stars and influencers joined the closed community. Even Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are among them. The voice method of communication creates the illusion that you are talking to your idol live. You involuntarily want to come up with something like Clubhouse, right? Looking ahead, let’s say that it is quite possible to implement such an idea. There are teams and resources like https://agilie.com/en/blog/voice-chat-app-like-clubhouse-how-to-create that can help. But first things first.
How Does Clubhouse Work?
Communication on the site takes place in audio format in real-time. Only some chats can be recorded with the permission of moderators. Conversations take place in separate rooms audio chats. There are speakers who have been given the floor, as well as listeners and moderators. If someone decides to become a speaker, he/she needs to raise his/her hand and wait for the approval of the moderator.
Each chat is dedicated to a particular topic. You can immediately see it in the name of the room. This enables participants to find topics of interest on the service. They also see which rooms the people they follow are visiting. Yes, in Clubhouse, you can also collect an army of subscribers, like on any other social network.
How Can It Be Useful for Business?
Marketing tools are aimed not at cold selling as before but at smoothly heating up interest in your product or service. In this sense, Clubhouse is an invaluable point of contact between businesses and customers used for warming up the audience.
This is how it works:
- You natively tell your audience about your product or service as part of a topic-specific conversation.
- You demonstrate your expertise by providing a wide audience with maximum useful and valuable information.
- You can force people to subscribe to you on other social networks where you will lead them further along the sales funnel until you close the deal.
There is another business advantage in communicating on the Clubhouse platform. Here, you can have corporate communication, inform employees about company news, or discuss current issues together.
Technical Implementation
Clubhouse and its analogs use conference servers. Thus, each user receives one incoming and one outgoing stream. Streaming and application control are made possible by web sockets communication protocols over a TCP connection. Live broadcasts take place using secure WebRTC technology, where the server only switches streams but does not participate in data exchange. To keep the broadcast take place with a delay of no more than a second, software tools such as Agora or Flashphoner prove to be very useful.
How Much Does It Cost to Develop an App Like Clubhouse?
The final cost of the project depends on the price of server hardware, as well as the cost of the licensed software and the direct work of programmers on technical implementation and support of the application. With the growing popularity of the application, you will have to buy new equipment and scale the functionality.
As a result, you will need:
- about $100,000 for technical equipment
- about $2,000 for licenses
- payment for programmers’ work
Based on this, what’s the point of aiming at such a level as the Clubhouse?
There are still many disadvantages in Clubhouse: inaccessibility for everyone, no possibility of text communication, dependence on the opinion of moderators, etc. And you can become the one who will give the world what it asks for. Covering the real needs of the audience is the surest way to victory.
And look how the application quickly jumped to the TOP, despite the existence of Instagram or TikTok. The world conquers the brave and admires the madmen who take risks. So, when you think that creating a service like Clubhouse is a utopian idea, think twice and implement it because the result will surprise you.