Clubhouse

Alpha Exploration Co.

About this app

Imagine a huuuge group voice note with all your friends on it.

You share a random thought and your best friend replies... then 2 minutes later another friend replies to both of you. Then your coworker replies to Kate, and they didn’t know each other before, but now they do, because they’re both friends with you, and now everybody’s talking.

And throughout the day new friends are saying hi, starting new chats, talking about what they’re doing, laughing and asking questions. And you’re hearing their voices, seeing who’s talking and joining in, and meeting their friends, and everybody’s getting to know each other better. And it’s good.

That’s what Clubhouse is.

It’s just voice. No follower counts or random people. Only your friends and their friends, in a place where you can all be yourselves and hang out like you do in real life.

Because life is more fun with friends around.

Ratings and reviews

A few issues have come up since the chat feature was introduced. Holding the speak button to talk is hard to do for people with moader issues. My hands shake after holding them in one place for long enough, and I’m sure it's impossible for others. Screen-reader accessibility is also broken in certain situations. I can no longer create a room now with Talkback on Android, and I’m told that IOS users have issues with it as well. These new features are OK; just fix the bugs and it'll be perfect.

Clubhouse went from a useful and fun platform to a frustrating, incoherent mess, literally overnight. I cannot fathom why they would change a satisfactory paradigm so radically. Worse, they seemingly have no idea how to create an intuitive user experience for the new environment. They clearly tried to repurpose the existing app, when what they needed to do was start over. Consequently, they've given us a convoluted, counterintuitive mess. Clubhouse is circling the drain, and it's a damn shame.

UI/UX is not good. It's very hard to connect with anyone on the app. The feed is flooded with "voice messages" which is weird. There is no obvious indicator of what "rooms" are actually live. There's no way to see where your friends currently are. It honestly looks like a cheap, unplanned app. Better off saving room on your phone.