Chinese Version Of Clubhouse: Localization Challenge Of Audio Social Entrepreneurship

With the launch of dialogue bar, capital coffee and other products, what opportunities and challenges will the Chinese version of clubhouse face?

At the beginning of February this year, under the influence of Tesla founder Musk's "online red belt" effect, American audio social software clubhouse quickly gained the influence of breaking the circle and became the hot spot pursued by the whole network.

The popularity of clubhouse has also ignited the entrepreneurial enthusiasm of domestic Internet practitioners. According to the 21st century economic report, there are hundreds of domestic teams working on the R & D layout of Chinese version of clubhouse products, and some teams even work overtime during the Chinese New Year.

According to the reporter's understanding, the first Chinese version of clubhouse officially launched in China should be the dialogue launched by Yingke. According to Feng Yousheng, founder of Yingke, the company discussed the clubhouse product before the Spring Festival, and its team launched the product on New Year's Eve by working overtime for several days.

On the evening of February 20, fengyousheng had a conversation with Zhu Xiaohu, partner of Jinshajiang venture capital, Zhou Yahui, founder of Kunlun wanwei, etc., on the app of dialogue bar, which quickly attracted the attention of a large number of users. But surprisingly, on the 22nd, the dialogue bar has been removed from the shelves in both Android and Apple stores. In response to this, the relevant personnel of the dialogue bar responded to the 21st century economic report that the main reason for the removal of the shelves is that the team is making some product function adjustments, and users who have downloaded the product can still use it normally.

At the same time, capital coffee launched by Jingzhun, a company of 36 krypton group (which is not in the listed entity 36 krypton), was launched on February 21. The product, like dialogue bar and club house, is an invitation system, which has attracted a lot of entrepreneurs and investors.

With the launch of dialogue bar, capital coffee and other products, what opportunities and challenges will the Chinese version of clubhouse face?

Audio business value reassessed

It is understood that the clubhouse, which became popular in early February this year, was actually born in March last year. It was jointly developed by Paul Davison and former Google employee Rohan Seth, and went online in April 2020. The product is cold started in the form of invitation system, but in less than a year, it has already had 2 million users. At the same time, after the recent completion of a new round of financing, the value of clubhouse has reached US $1 billion.

In fact, the popularity of clubhouse can not be completely attributed to Musk's "carrying goods", he just accelerated the process of this product out of the circle.

Zhang Yi, CEO and chief analyst of AI media consulting, analyzed the 21st century economic report. From the perspective of product form, Internet products used to transmit information mainly through words, pictures and videos. For users, receiving information was mainly based on eyes and supplemented by ears. However, with the development of products and technology, the mobile phone screen and other electronic screens that users contact are becoming larger and longer. The visual enjoyment has reached a certain limit, and eye fatigue is also increasing. As an information carrier, audio entrepreneurship ushers in new development opportunities, and the popularity of clubhouse is also related to this.

"Compared with the forms of text, pictures and video, it will be relatively difficult for audio to realize advertising revenue, which is one of the main reasons why audio entrepreneurship has not been taken seriously in the past." Zhou Wei, founding partner of CCV, told the 21st century economic report.

But audio products also have advantages that other products don't have, he said. They have Companion attributes and are products with weak attention and strong demand. When users are using pictures, text and video products, they need to keep their eyes on. But in the use of audio products, users do not need to maintain such a high degree of concentration, can exercise, drive, do housework, maintain a higher degree of freedom of time.

As a result, in the audio venture track, domestic market has also run YY voice, litchi, Himalaya and other products. What is the difference and charm of clubhouse compared with YY voice chat room, which belongs to audio social track?

In this regard, Zhou Wei explained that the biggest difference between clubhouse and voice chat products in the past lies in the difference in users' right to speak. It turns out that in the product of voice chat room, either a big person shares his opinions, others listen to the class seriously, or a group of people are full of gossip, which makes it difficult to produce high-quality discussions. The change in clubhouse is that it is often dominated by the core KOL. If the audience is interested, they will also have the opportunity to participate in the discussion after raising their hands. This not only ensures the quality of the dialogue, but also allows the audience to have a higher degree of participation.

"I also like the mechanism in Clubhouse where friends pay attention to each other. I can also sit in on the topic discussion that friends participate in. It's also a new way to get information in areas that you haven't been exposed to before. " He said.

Chinese version of club house competition starts

When clubhouse is popular all over the Internet in the United States, similar products of Chinese version also appear one after another after the Spring Festival, and capital coffee launched by whale is one of them.

Chai yuan, head of the capital coffee project, recalled to the 21st century economic report that he first heard that musk was going to make a speech on the club house. As a musk fan, he began to look for invitation codes everywhere, and then download and use the club house.

On the day of Musk's speech, Chai yuan failed to squeeze into Musk's lecture room due to the large number of people. But in the process of wandering in other rooms of the club house, he accidentally found some friends who had not been in touch for a long time, and they had a hot chat on the platform. Chai yuan also gradually "poisoned" the software, and even spent more than 8 hours a day on it.

While using clubhouse, Chai yuan is also thinking about the possibility of similar products landing in China. "At that time, many of the Chinese who played clubhouse were in the science and technology circles and venture capital circles. Jingzhun also served in the field of venture capital in China for many years, accumulating a large number of resources and customer groups. We have a good cold start brand endorsement, feel that we can try to do relevant Chinese version products. " He said.

As a result, the research and development team started to produce products on February 12, the first day of the lunar new year, and the final test version of capital coffee was launched on February 21.

As for the future business model of the product, Chai Yuan said frankly that the product is still in the early stage of development, and the team hopes to focus more on functional improvement and product operation, and commercialization is not the focus at this stage. In terms of long-term development, Jingzhun app served nearly 2000 start-ups last year, helping to connect investors for financing. These existing businesses can be grafted on capital coffee to provide more value-added services for start-ups and investment institutions.

In addition to capital coffee and the dialogue mentioned above, there are many teams in China that are engaged in the R & D of related products. Some industry insiders have analyzed the reporters and said that at present, it can be predicted that social giants such as microblog, Tencent and fast hand, and vertical audio companies such as Lichi and Himalaya will make similar attempts. For start-up companies, without the accumulation of funds and resources, it will be very difficult to run out.

Focus on community atmosphere, operation level and localization ability

"At present, there are some Chinese version of clubhouse products on the market. They are similar in product design, and some even copy clubhouse completely." Zhou Wei said.

In his opinion, product design is not the most important thing. The most important thing is how the team guides users so that users at different levels can continue to have effective, interesting and valuable communication. What ultimately determines success or failure is the community atmosphere formed from the seed user stage, which is a very delicate thing.

For example, Zhou Wei's team once invested in social app exploration. At that time, many people thought that Momo had done a lot, and there was no chance for exploration. But from the perspective of community atmosphere, there are great differences between the two. Probe is a product from a female perspective, and pays more attention to the experience of female users, while Momo is a product from a male perspective. This difference allows probe to gain the attention of different user groups.

"Clubhouse did not break out suddenly in the United States. It also had a warm-up process for more than a year, forming a relatively mature community atmosphere. After the product is completely out of the circle, the new users basically abide by the original rules and will not have too much impact on the tonality of the product. " Zhou added.

Zhou Wei also said that the advantage of large companies in making audio social products with existing resources is that they can get a lot of traffic quickly. However, this does not mean that it can be made. The fine operation of the community atmosphere will ultimately determine the success or failure. Therefore, startups also have the opportunity to grow bigger, and the genesis partner team is also paying close attention to the relevant entrepreneurial teams.

Zhu Xiaohu believes that clubhouse prefers knowledge sharing, similar to the model of Zhihu. This mode can work in text and voice chat, but we must do content precipitation and playback of recording and broadcasting. The core of this product is to test the operation ability and keep the users. The key to the core is to leave good quality content to the users who need it.

Zhou Yahui believes that clubhouse is the most innovative social product in Silicon Valley in the past five years, which is really oriented to the entire IOT era. If such products as clubhouse and dialogue bar are added with video application, they will have a very wide range of value, and can reconstruct the community relationship of learning and communication in education, health care and various vertical fields.

Meanwhile, Zhou Yahui judged that clubhouse will be a successful product in the United States in the future, and its valuation may even exceed that of twitter. The biggest challenge of the Chinese version of clubhouse in China may be that Chinese people are generally not good at expressing themselves. Whether it can stimulate Chinese people's desire for expression is the key point for the existence of similar clubhouse products in China.