Clubhouse

Earlier this year, when Clubhouse became a global sensation, a three-year-old Indian company called Leher decided to compete head-on with the Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup. Serial entrepreneur Vikas Malpani started Leher in 2018 along with Atul Jaju, former senior vice president at Goldman Sachs. For the first two years, the company chugged along but didn’t demonstrate significant growth. But Clubhouse’s overnight popularity in 2021 changed that. Malpani decided to emulate Clubhouse’s format and let users create private groups to invite select friends and acquaintances for live conversations. Now, Leher has over 300,000 users who log on to the platform each month to discuss the startup scene, cryptocurrencies, films, spirituality, religion, and more. It aims to reach the 1 million mark in the next six months. Backed by Orios Venture Partners, Leher was selected for Google’s accelerator program, Google for Startups, in November 2020. We spoke with Malpani about Leher leveraging Clubhouse’s popularity and its revenue model. The following interview has been edited and consolidated for clarity and brevity. KrASIA (Kr): How has Leher evolved since its inception?  » Read More

Clubhouse has been the hottest social sensation in the last year and master moderator Isis Djata has taken full advantage. Since joining the social audio app in December 2020, Djata has built a following of over 60,000 people. She quickly scaled her Clubhouse following from zero to 40,000 in 8 weeks by joining rooms and contributing to conversations. “When I first started going into rooms, I sat in the audience and listened,” Djata told Entrepreneur magazine. “Then, I slowly started getting on the stage and becoming active in conversations.” Djata’s contributions paid off while she was in a room with real estate mogul Grant Cardone. He immediately started following her on Clubhouse and her fanbase exploded after that. That’s when Djata decided to take her Clubhouse participation to the next level by hosting her own rooms. She founded one of the largest investing groups on Clubhouse, Investing While Black. This room has attracted over 30,000 followers. “If you don’t have relationship equity, no one will bring you onto their big stages,” said Djata.  » Read More

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that’s up 27% year over year. This Week in Apps will finally be a newsletter!  » Read More

Author of the article: Lindsay Morey The Strathcona Druids Rugby Football Club is looking to secure more than $667,000 in federal funding for the redevelopment of its club house. Lindsay Morey/News Staff It’s not a question of if, but when a new clubhouse will be built at the Lynn Davies Rugby Park in Sherwood Park. Advertisement This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Strathcona Druids Rugby Football Club (RFC) was given a heads up by the province more than a few years ago that its clubhouse would have to be relocated on the park site because of increased pipeline construction along the utility corridor near the Anthony Henday, which is only a few hundred metres from its building. Construction of the TransMountain pipeline expansion already took place last year on the west side of the transmission lines, however, another pipe will be laid on the east side of the lines soon, so the pressure is on for the club to shift its operations by about 200 metres down the field.  » Read More

Spaces, Twitter’s answer to Clubhouse has received an update that adds a few interesting features to the mix. Apart from a new tweet composter, this update also introduces some discovery features, albeit for the iOS version of the app. Twitter Spaces already had a tweet composer for when people would want to tweet while listening to a particular talk. However, the new composer, which is available for Android and iOS both, allows you to tweet with the hashtags of the Space and automatically adds a link to the live audio. Handles of the hosts won’t be included yet, but support for the same will be added soon. Twitter’s iOS version gets a few new additions as well. All Tab Beta users will now be able to search for live and upcoming Spaces by their titles, host names, or host handles. Moreover, all live and upcoming Spaces have now become searchable on the iOS version of the app. Updated guest management also makes its way into Twitter Spaces for iOS. The control bar has been placed at the top of the guest management page for it to be easily accessible to users.  » Read More

Anti-LGBTQ+ hate preacher Rick Wiles has announced that he’s launching the social media platform of your racist, homophobic uncle’s dreams: GODtribe.  The right-wing pundit, TruNews host, and conspiracy theory peddler told his audience last week that he intends to debut the site on an upcoming episode of the program. His intent: to create a safe place where straight white Christian men can congregate and feel safe from being “feminized, criticized, or called racist.” “Because especially here in America, a lot of young men feel like they’re under attack, and they are under attack,” he explained. “The culture warriors in this country are breaking down traditions, morals, family structure, they’ve been doing this for decades. They are aiming their guns at young men. They want to feminize them. They want to demonize them. They want to criminalize them. They want to, you know, depress them, so that they will not act like the men that God created them to be.” Of course, Wiles also took the opportunity to further disparage the transgender community.  » Read More

Clubhouse has announced that it will be undergoing a rebranding due to brand confusion with the other Clubhouse. The company that operates its website on the Clubhouse.io domain name announced that it will be rebranding as Shortcut. The company appears to have been able to acquire Shortcut.com in advance of the rebranding news (Whois is private, so I can not independently confirm). Clubhouse announced the news today on Twitter: Read all about the new name change: https://t.co/PRLnvbkWFK — Clubhouse (soon to be Shortcut) (@clubhouseio) July 29, 2021 I think it is pretty obvious why Clubhouse.io is changing its name to Shortcut. Another company called Clubhouse has quickly become the more well-known Clubhouse, as the company explained in today’s blog post announcing the forthcoming change: “For many of you, the reason for this is probably pretty obvious. The Clubhouse Audio App became so big so fast that we couldn’t possibly hope to forever maintain our own brand standing in the face of their popularity.” The chat app,  » Read More

A rival to Spotify’s recently released live audio app and Clubhouse Spotify GreenroomThere is a long way to go if you want to adopt top social audio platforms such as Clubhouse, Airtime and Spoon, not to mention those from top social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. So far, the new Greenroom app has only been downloaded to iOS a total of 141,000 times, according to data from app intelligence company Sensor Tower. This includes downloading from the previous iteration Locker Room — app Spotify. Acquired Move to live audio. For Android, Google Play data Indicates The app has been installed over 100,000 times, but the sensor tower still can’t see this number. For comparison, the total number of Clubhouse installations today is 30.2 million, of which 18.7 million are on iOS, says Sensor Tower. Other top audio apps include Airtime, which has 11.4 million iOS installed out of a total of 14.3 million (including Android). Spoon with 7.6 million iOS installations out of a total of 27.3 million.  » Read More

Spotify’s recently launched live audio app and Clubhouse rival, Spotify Greenroom, has a long road ahead of it if it wants to take on top social audio platforms like Clubhouse, Airtime, Spoon and others, not to mention those from top social networks, like Twitter and Facebook. To date, the new Greenroom app has only been downloaded a total of 141,000 times on iOS, according to data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower. This includes downloads from its earlier iteration, Locker Room — an app Spotify acquired to make its move into live audio. On Android, Google Play data indicates the app has been installed over 100,000 times, but Sensor Tower cannot yet confirm this figure. For comparison, Clubhouse today has 30.2 million total installs, 18.7 million of which are on iOS, Sensor Tower says. Other top audio apps include Airtime, with 11.4 million iOS installs, out of a total of 14.3 million (including Android); and Spoon, with 7.6 million iOS installs, out of a total of  27.3 million.  » Read More

Joyce Tan (Half the industry has between three and eight years’ experience. But we don’t always get to hear their thoughts. As part of a collaboration with GroupM’s Young Leaders Committee nCo, AdNews asked four of GroupM’s rising stars for their perspective on an industry hot topic.) Joyce Tan is a senior media executive at Mindshare and a member of GroupM’s Young Leaders Committee nCo. It was going to be the next big thing, but has Clubhouse has already gone quiet?  There are few defining moments where my media life crossed over into my home life in an unexpected way. The day my dad and mum excitedly requesting a Clubhouse invite from their two daughters over a family Zoom call on a quiet Sunday afternoon. How bizarre. I wondered why they needed an invite to their own sports clubhouse when I knew their membership wasn’t due to expire for years. Until it dawned on me,  » Read More