Clubhouse is a new buzzy social media application of 2021. Looking to build a similar app? Let us help you estimate its cost.
Clubhouse is a new buzzy social media application of 2021, recently valued at $100 million after receiving a $12 million funding from Andreessen Horowitz. The website less application has brought a number of popular names on its side, right at a beta stage.
For something like the past two decades, social media startups have been coming up with novel and new ways for helping people connect with peers, friends, and celebrities. While most of the ideas bombed, there have been a few grand successes that the sector has witnessed – Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. The latest entry to this list of successes is Clubhouse.
Within less than a year after launch in April 2020, Clubhouse has crossed around 11 million downloads globally. The rise to fame of the Clubhouse social app was very consistent from the start, but its popularity skyrocketed at the beginning of 2021. This is where some of the most iconic personalities from the world of tech, including Elon Musk and Mark Zukerberg, not only admitted to using Clubhouse but also engaged with other users on the platform. Not only social media apps, but nowadays cash apps are coming into the main field pretty quickly. Entrepreneurs are carefully analyzing the cost of apps like Sqare’s Cash app to digitize the payments.
In this article, we will deep dive into the unconventional social media application and the considerations an entrepreneur will have to make if they want to follow the brand’s shoes and enter the space with their partnership with a social media app development company.
The success of the Clubhouse social media app is one of the main talking points these days, but is the idea behind the app actually completely unique and unreplicable? We take a detailed look at Clubhouse, its features, and whether you can make an app like Clubhouse.
What is Clubhouse?
Clubhouse social media app has been making news across a number of platforms. By letting people chat in real-time, collaborate, share stories, or simply bounce ideas off of each other through voice and zero other equipment, Clubhouse is bringing the feel of media out of social media, leaving behind nothing but the social aspects.
There are a number of ways Clubhouse is redefining social media presence and engagement for businesses and marketers:
- It provides the ability for engaging and connecting with professionals from your industry
- It comes with rooms that are filled with real-time chats on a number of topics
- The focus area of Clubhouse is not on produced content but on high-value conversations
- It is bringing the one factor that most social media apps to the forefront – audio.
The Clubhouse app on iPhone is invite-only. (there are talks that there’ll be a Clubhouse app on Android, but the launch date is not announced yet). To become a user, you need an invitation from another person already registered in the app, some of whom are – Kevin Hart, Jared Leto, Fab 5 Freddy, Oprah Winfrey, Drake, or MC Hammer. This sense of exclusivity is one of the factors that makes Clubhouse so unique.
One of the biggest reasons that have made the Clubhouse voice chat app a trend today is the feature set that it comes with. Here are all the new-in-the-market features that the brand’s social media app developers team has worked on. They also give a peek into how to use the Clubhouse app.
Must-Have Features for Clubhouse Like Application Development
1. Profile Creation
The application comes with a very basic profile creation process. Users have to put in their name and phone number when they sign up. The name (or username as it’s commonly called) is one that the users have to book in advance – for the time they don’t get an invite to enter the application.
2. Clubhouse Hallway
It is the main feed of the audio networking app Clubhouse. This is where the users can view the present and ongoing chatrooms. The clubs or scheduled rooms that you follow also are listed on top of the hallway.
From the Hallway itself, you can:
- Search for someone using their keyword or name
- Invite someone to join Clubhouse
- View calendar with upcoming rooms’ dates
- Manage your Clubhouse profile
3. Clubhouse Rooms
Clubhouse Room gives you a view of the name of people in the room and the topic they are conversing about. You can see Room as a podcast. The section gives you the feasibility of listening in on a conversation or mute/leave the room to explore other active rooms in the hallway.
Inside the room, you get details of the name of the speaker, moderator, and the listener/ audience listening in to the conversation.
4. Clubhouse App Clubs
The application gives you the ease to create clubs within the app. This enables you to create communities inside the platform wherein you can host n number of conversations and meetups with the other members.
There are primarily four types of memberships active inside a club:
- Founder
- Members
- Admin
- Follower
5. Notifications
Clubhouse app’s push notification strategy is fairly direct. When you click on the notifications icon, you can see a number of notifications like –
- Your new follower
- When your connection is speaking in a room
- When your connection invites you into a room
- When someone you’re following schedules a room.
6. Clubhouse Invitation
For inviting someone to Clubhouse, they should be a contact in your phone. When you connect your address book with Clubhouse you can see the people who are already on the application and also search and invite people to the application.
7. Moderation
One of the areas where Clubhouse is facing major backlash is the poor moderation in chat rooms. There have been numerous complaints from the users about racist, abusive talks. There should be a proper moderation space in every room which should drop the speaker or limit the interaction of an audience who is hurting the sentiments of people through hate speech.
8. Reminders
In the Clubhouse app, the live conversations cannot be recorded or stored, and therefore, the users should be promptly notified whenever their favorite speaker or topic-based room is started. They should not miss the same, and this is ensured by a solid and prompt reminder and notification system.
9. Following Speakers & Trends
There is the following option for the speakers and trends that the user can use whenever they come across what they like to tailor their activity area. The following feature allows the user to be updated on all the activities of the speaker or around the trend.
10. Activity
The Activity area will create a history of all your interactions. You will be able to see all the accounts that you follow, what you have been doing lately on the app, and find out who joined the application recently. You can also see the clubs people are in and the upcoming occasions.
11. Topics
The topics are like the tags of the rooms. Clubhouse offers a large list of topics to make it possible for people to find the right room. The speakers can assign topics when they create the room, and the user can use those topics to find the room. This makes the app experience simple and intuitive for all.
How Much Does it Cost to Build an App Like Clubhouse?
The cost of social audio app Clubhouse is dependent on a series of factors. Like every mobile app development cost estimate, there are four elements that build up to form the price of the application.
- Mobile app design
- Features-set
- Location of the agency
- Team size
When we talk about the Clubhouse app, we recommend taking the same route as they did – create and launch a Beta version first before the actual application launch. This way, you will be able to measure users’ interest before creating a feature-rich product.
Our social media app developers advise that entrepreneurs should start with creating a set of features’ list, on the basis of which we can discuss the technological and resource aspects – something that will help us finalize the social media app development cost.
Now that we have looked into the different aspects which have to be considered for developing an app like Clubhouse, let us conclude by looking into the different ways an entrepreneur can make money from their Clubhouse like application.
How to Earn Money From Clubhouse-like Application?
The fact that the USP of Clubhouse like application is to make popular personalities approachable opens multiple monetization avenues for the businesses looking to enter a similar model. Especially since there’s already a number of ways Clubhouse App for business is already proving profitable. It offers the opportunity to connect with others in your industry, as well as to network with other business leaders. Beyond the mentorship potential, you can also use it to become a thought leader yourself. As more people slowly receive invites to join, it will pay off big to have spent time positioning yourself as an expert and start gaining followers early.
Clubhouse app is helping entrepreneurs open up to opportunities by
- Asking users to tip speakers
- Giving out tickets for live talks or streams
- App subscription
- In-app advertisement.
Looking ahead to social media marketing in 2021 and beyond, audio based social app Clubhouse represents a changing demand for our audiences. People want to see more engagement, value, and transparency but they don’t necessarily want the production and endless waves of content that come with following a brand on social media.
As for now, the Clubhouse app is available for free. However, the app has announced that it will soon launch a donation feature that will allow the creators to earn money in their live talks, and this way, the app will get a share from the donations received. Moreover, advertisements are the best monetization strategy to keep any app free, and therefore, sooner or later, the Clubhouse app will adopt this monetization strategy.
Summary
Clubhouse is a rapidly growing product that’s already gained millions of users. People fell in love with these newly discovered audio discussions. The possibility to talk about various topics with experts and amateurs where people can share their thoughts no matter how many followers they have is very much appreciated.
The possibility that well-known social media players will try to create a similar solution is relatively high, as and when the app goes public. Also, the marketers and ecommerce business owners will start entering the space as soon as the app is publicly available. So now is the time to exploit the domain before it too becomes mainstream. Let our social media app developers help you.