Talking to Strangers on Clubhouse

This past week, I joined the buzzing new social media platform coined “Clubhouse.” As an audio-based conversation platform it is closer to LinkedIn than to Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. It has a drop-in feature that allows you to join public or private conversations about topics ranging from technology, to professional development, to healthy living, to sports, to the future of the church.

Users hold the microphone and are able to create communities that host panels. guest speakers, and other discussion events. On Thursday evening, Mark Zuckerberg dropped in to a Clubhouse room to talk the future of tech. Imagine the possibilities for new church communities in spaces like this.

When I first joined, I was surprised that the conversations were not random groups of friends talking about life or whatever it is that you expect on Facebook or Twitter. No, the conversations were driven. It was much more professional-focused and targeted to leaders in a given industry. But at the same time, everyone had a voice and was able to chip-in to the discussion.

After a clubhouse conversation about the future of the church with nearly sixty participants, someone that I had never met wrote a reflection about what he had witnessed. I encourage you to read the article below and think about some of these questions.

Questions to ponder:

  • How is the Holy Spirit moving online? In what ways do we see God present in the conversations that we have?
  • Lutz wrote, “platforms comes an go but the church endures.” How will your church or ministry survive when the platform you have invested loses its relevancy?
  • Clubhouse is a new sort of social media that uses voice instead of image. What potential do you see for the church in platforms that do not rely on imagery?

Please feel free to comment below by hitting the “reply” button with and thoughts, comments, or questions.

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I am getting an invite for Clubhouse soon. I found drop in voice chat in Discord to be a great way to casually connect with friends compared to scheduled Zoom calls.

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Just welcomed @chrislim to Clubhouse along with @ashish and we had a moment of wonder and awe :slight_smile:

I wrote up this little reflection after my 1st week on #clubhouse - 10 Reasons Why Clubhouse is Awesome | by DJ Chuang | Jan, 2021 | Medium - and at the bottom of this article, there’s a link to a slide deck titled Clubhouse Psychology, that’s a thorough overview about this new drop-in audio chat.

Currently iOS only, but it’s starting off with a good culture and vibe to grow its audience. Here’s a mind-blowing stat: 2 million active users WEEKLY, and average user duration is 90 MINUTES!

And, industry expert Jeremiah Owyang recently posted his analysis - The Future of Social Audio: Startups, Roadmap, Business Models, and a Forecast | Jeremiah Owyang

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It was great to connect today @djchuang! The stats you shared about Clubhouse is mind-boggling, WOW!

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It was fun to connect! @ajma invited me and a few seconds later I found myself reconnecting with you.

We discussed why the tech community has less of a penchant for hanging out in social spaces–our coding works requires long stretches of intense focus to bootstrap our mental context in order to write code–almost as if we were writing deep essays for hours a day. But I think there’s always room for social time and in such cases clubhouse could be the place to hang out around the virtual water-cooler!

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Just read this fascinating analysis of clubhouse: