Clubhouse, a new social network in which instead of writing short messages or sharing images we speak live, is quickly attracting the attention of newspapers and internet enthusiasts also in Italy, after in the past few weeks he had done it in the United States.Unlike Facebook and more similarly to Twitter, Clubhouse is designed to converse any topic not only with those who know each other, but with anyone, or even just to listen to others who talk about something.
It has existed since last March, and it is a kind of forum, but oral instead of written.It could resemble Telegram, if Telegram was made of only voice messages, with the difference that in Clubhouse there is nothing recorded: we speak live, asking to intervene with a symbolic raised of hand.Instead of Telegram's "channels", however, the groups are called "rooms".
For now, in Italy, Clubhouse is used almost exclusively by journalists, experts of digital tools and people with a big following online (including Luca Bizzarri and Marco Montemagno), because it is still in a version of development and you can make a profileOnly if you are invited by another user.For the same reason you can only access an app (not from the browser of a computer) only in English, which can only be downloaded on iPhone or iPad with iOS 13.0 or more updated operating system.
If somehow you can get a profile, Clubhouse asks to register with their name and surname ("People use their real name on Clubhouse 🙂 Thanks!", He says a message) and to have access to the telephone address book.In fact, each profile corresponds to a telephone number, not at an email address.Subsequently you can choose your interests from a long list of possibilities, and see which among the people you have the phone number are already present on the social network: it is better to choose some to follow, because then Clubhouse offers "rooms" into enter to listen or speak on the basis of those who follow.In a later phase you can also decide to connect your profile to Twitter or Instagram, and thus find people who also follow on those social networks.
"Our aim was to build a social experience that was perceived as more human, where instead of posting we gathered with other people to speak," the founders of Clubhouse, Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, on the social blog, explained a few days agonetwork."We wanted to create such a space that when you close the app you feel better than when you opened it, because it allowed you to deepen a friendship, meet new people and learn something".The conversations are not recorded on the app, nor can they be shared among users or download, if not with external tools that go against the idea behind the social network.
On the basis of a first reconnaissance, for now in the Italian rooms we speak above all of Clubhouse itself - even just because those who arrive want to understand how to use it - and the themes that affect the categories of people who first have had access to the social: therefore journalism,Communication and marketing, above all.Anyone, however, can open a room, choose whether to open it to everyone or only to some people, and give it a theme.Among those of the most varied topic, for example "musical events: will be done in 2021?", "TV series that little (or too much) is talked about: what to watch?"But also "I am looking for physical that makes me understand the big bang".In some there were less than 10 participants, in others more than 50: most users listen to without intervening.The rooms can also be programmed for a certain hour, as an event on Facebook, so that those interested can be put on a warning.
Each Clubhouse user has two invitations to let other people enter, so the first way to create a profile is to be invited by someone who knows himself is already recorded.It is possible to get admitted through someone who knows each other even if this person has already used his two invitations: as long as his phone number is saved in his address book.In fact, once we have registered on the waiting list to enter the Clubhouse all the people with whom you are in touch that are already recorded on the social network receive a notification and have the opportunity to "let you enter" without using invitations.
Clubhouse said she has already reached 2 million members and also in the United States has a limited user, which however includes famous people such as Oprah Winfrey, Drake and Elon Musk, the entrepreneur of Tesla and Spacex.Musk just tested the current Clubhouse skills by organizing one of his room: in a short time he filled himself with more than five thousand participants (a maximum limit that had never been achieved), so much so that some users have in turn open someRooms where to transmit, with a second smartphone, the words of Musk.A bit like when the festivals the popularity of a guest fills a room, and those who stay outside must settle for the live video in the next one.
The great popularity obtained by Clubhouse in the last period - also thanks to Musk - has also understandable about its current limits.One concerns Privacy: Carola Frediani, a Cybersecurity expert, explained in her network wars newsletter that, given that Clubhouse asks in a very insistent way to have access to the phone's phone book of those who use it, according to the guarantor for data protectionof Hamburg would not meet the requirements of the European Privacy Regulation (GDPR).
Another limit is moderation: those who create a room is moderator and can give and remove the word to other participants, but there is no way to prevent rooms in which, for example, false information or messages d'hate.The American edition of Vanity Fair took care of the topic in December, after in a room where there was talk of terrorist attacks in Paris, a user had made inexpensive or questionable statements on people of Muslim religion.Another user who used Clubhouse to say anti -Semitic and racist things has instead been banned from the social network, behind reports of other people, but at the moment it is not clear if the founders of the platform have a plan to moderate more conversations.