To Compete Better, Clubhouse Adds 'Clips,' 'Replays,' And 'Universal Search'

Clubhouse is the popular social audio chat app. And things are improving over there.

After starting in April of 2020, Clubhouse piggybacked the 'COVID-19' coronavirus to boost its popularity among social media users who just needed something unique in their pandemic-affected social media lives.

And after receiving $12 million Series A funding, the app quickly took off.

Within months, it grew from a mere thousands of users, to hundreds of thousands, to then earn a valuation of nearly $100 million. Less than a year later, the service reached a valuation of $1 billion, meaning that it is considered a unicorn.

All of that it achieved, while still in beta.

After opening itself to the public, Clubhouse that became no longer exclusive to iOS, needed to improvise.

And among the attempts, according to its blog post, is giving everyone a "new feature."

First, is by launching what it calls the "Universal Search."

What this feature does, is improving Clubhouse's search function to help users find live and scheduled audio rooms, users and clubs oriented around certain interests.

This in turn should improve discoverability on Clubhouse.

Next, is the ability to record and replay conversations and also download 30-second clips to share on social media or other sites.

To create what Clubhouse calls "Clips," users can tap on a scissor icon to capture the past 30 seconds of audio. After that, the audio can then be locally downloaded, or shared widely.

Then, there is the feature to allow users to record a room, save it to their profile and club, or download it.

Clubhouse is calling the feature "Replays."

This feature is meant for creators and moderators. They can use this feature by toggling the option on or off. It should be noted that rooms must be public to be recorded.

And lastly, Clubhouse is also introducing spatial audio for Android. This feature already exists on iOS.

These features come right at a time when larger tech rivals like Facebook and Instagram, as well as Twitter have also introduced competing "social audio" features.

"Right now it's too hard for (creators) to grow," Paul Davison, Clubhouse's co-creator and chief executive, said in an interview. "Anytime you help create a great moment or there's a good quote, you can share that out far and wide, alongside a link that tells people where to go to join that club."

At first, Clubhouse is rolling out some of the features gradually. The company begins with by only launching them to certain creators on its platform.

This is because Clubhouse acknowledges the fact about the dangers of letting users share 30-second audio clips. If an audio is cropped at the right time, and edited, for example, things can be out of context.

This can create misinformation or disinformation, or even malinformation.

For example, a bad actor could potentially clip audio to obscure what someone really meant. And may be stitching different audios together, in order to create a clever hoax.

Clubhouse has struggled with content moderation in its short history. By slowly rolling the features out, Clubhouse wants to see how the public perceive the features, in order to make necessary fixes before its public release.