INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Forget the calendar invite
Just jump into a conversation
That the idea powering a fresh batch of social startups poised to take advantage of our cleared schedules amidst quarantine
But they could also change the way we work and socialize long after COVID-19 by bringing the free-flowing, ad-hoc communication of parties
and open office plans online
While &Live& has become synonymous with performative streaming, these new apps instead spread the limelight across several users as well as
the task, game, or discussion at hand.
The most buzzy of these startups is Clubhouse, an audio-based social network where people can
spontaneously jump into voice chat rooms together
You see the unlabeled rooms of all the people you follow, and you can join to talk or just listen along, milling around to find what
High-energy rooms attract crowds while slower ones see participants slip out to join other chat circles.
Clubhouse blew up this weekend on
VC Twitter as people scrambled for exclusive invites, humblebragged about their membership, or made fun of everyone FOMO
For now, there no public app or access
The name Clubhouse perfectly captures how people long to be part of the in-crowd.
Clubhouse was built by Paul Davison, who previously
founded serendipitous offline people-meeting location app Highlight and reveal-your-whole-camera-roll app Shorts before his team was
acquired by Pinterest in 2016
This year he debuted his Alpha Exploration Co startup studio and launched Talkshow for instantly broadcasting radio-style call-in shows
Spontaneity is the thread that ties Davison work together, whether its for making new friends, sharing your life, transmitting your
thoughts, or having a discussion.
It very early days for Clubhouse
It doesn&t even have a website
There no telling exactly what it will be like if or when it officially launches, and Davison and his co-founder Rohan Seth declined to
But the positive reception shows a desire for a more immediate, multi-media approach to discussion that updates what Twitter did with
text.
Sheltered From Surprise
What quarantine has revealed is that when you separate everyone, spontaneity is a big thing you miss
In your office, that could be having a random watercooler chat with a co-worker or commenting aloud about something funny you found on the
At a party, it could be wandering up to chat with group of people because you know one of them or overhear something interesting
That lacking while we&re stuck home since we&ve stigmatized randomly phoning a friend, differing to asynchronous text despite its lack of
urgency.
Clubhouse founder Paul Davison
Image Credit: JD Lasica
Scheduled Zoom calls, utilitarian Slack threads, and endless email chains don&t capture the thrill of surprise or
the joy of conversation that giddily revs up as people riff off each other ideas
But smart app developers are also realizing that spontaneity doesn&t mean constantly interrupting people life or workflow
They give people the power to decide when they are or aren&t available or signal that they&re not to be disturbed so they&re only thrust
into social connection when they want it.
Houseparty chart ranks via AppAnnie
Houseparty embodies this spontaneity
It become the breakout hit of quarantine by letting people on a whim join group video chat rooms with friends the second they open the app
It saw 50 million downloads in a month, up 70X over its pre-COVID levels in some places
It become the #1 social app in 82 countries including the US, and #1 overall in 16 countries.
Originally built for gaming, Discord lets
communities spontaneously connect through persistent video, voice, and chat rooms
It seen a 50% increase in US daily voice users with spikes in shelter-in-place early adopter states like California, New York, New Jersey,
Bunch, for video chat overlayed on mobile gaming, is also climbing the charts and going mainstream with its user base shifting to become
majority female as they talk for 1.5 million minutes per day
Both apps make it easy to join up with pals and pick something to play together.
The Impromptu Office
Enterprise video chat tools are
adapting to spontaneity as an alternative to heavy-handed, pre-meditated Zoom calls
There been a backlash as people realize they don&t get anything done by scheduling back-to-back video chats all day.
Loom lets you quickly
record and send a video clip to co-workers that they can watch at their leisure, with back-and-forth conversation sped up because videos are
uploaded as they&re shot.
Loom
Around overlays small circular video windows atop your screen so you can instantly communicate with
colleagues while most of your desktop stays focused on your actual work.
Around
Screen exists as a tiny widget that can launch a
collaborative screenshare where everyone gets a cursor to control the shared window so they can improvisationally code, design, write, and
annotate.
Screen
Pragli is an avatar-based virtual office where you can see if someone in a calendar meeting, away, or in flow listening to
music so you know when to instantly open a voice or video chat channel together without having to purposefully find a time everyone free
But instead of following you home like Slack, Pragli lets you sign in and out of the virtual office to start and end your day.
Pragli
Raising Our Voice
While visual communication has been the breakout feature of our mobile phones by allowing us to show where we are,
shelter-in-place means we don&t have much to show
That expanded the opportunity for tools that take a less-is-more approach to spontaneous communication
Whether for remote partying or rapid problem solving, new apps beyond Clubhouse are incorporating voice rather than just video
Voice offers a way to rapidly exchange information and feel present together without dominating our workspace or attention, or forcing
people into an uncomfortable spotlight.
High Fidelity is Second Life co-founder Philip Rosedale $72 million-funded current startup
After recently pivoting away from building a virtual reality co-working tool, High Fidelity has begun testing a voice and headphones-based
online event platform and gathering place
The early beta lets users move their dot around a map and hear the voice of anyone close to them with spatial audio so voices get louder as
you get closer to someone, and shift between your ears as you move past them
You can spontaneously approach and depart little clusters of dots to explore different conversations within earshot.
An unofficial mockup
of High Fidelity early tests
Image Credits: DigitalGlobe (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
High Fidelity is currently using a satellite photo of Burning Man as its
It allows DJs to set up in different corners, and listeners to stroll between them or walk off with a friend to chat, similar to the real
Since Burning Man was cancelled this year, High Fidelity could potentially be a candidate for holding the scheduled virtual version the
organizers have promised.
Houseparty former CEO Ben Rubin and Skype GM of engineering Brian Meek are building a spontaneous teamwork tool
Rubin sold Houseparty to Fortnite-maker Epic in mid-2019, but the gaming giant largely neglected the app until its recent quarantine-driven
Rubin left.
His new startup site explains that &/talk is an anti-meeting tool for fast, decentralized conversations
We believe most meetings can be eliminated if the right people are connected at the right time to discuss the right topics, for just as long
as necessary.& It lets people quickly jump into a voice or video chat to get something sorted without delaying until a calendared collab
session.
Slashtalk co-founder Ben Rubin at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2015
Whether for work or play, these spontaneous apps can conjure times
from our more unstructured youth
Whether sifting through the cafeteria or school yard, seeing who else is at the mall, walking through halls of open doors in college dorms,
or hanging at the student union or campus square, the pre-adult years offer many opportunities for impromptu social interation.
As we age
and move into our separate homes, we literally erect walls that limit our ability to perceive the social cues that signal that someone
available for unprompted communication
That spawned apps like Down To Lunch and Snapchat acquisition Zenly, and Facebook upcoming Messenger status feature designed to break
through those barriers and make it feel less desperate to ask someone to hang out offline.
Under quarantine, media is actually social
But
while socializing or collaborating IRL requires transportation logistics and usually a plan, the new social apps discussed here bring us
together instantly, thereby eliminating the need to schedule togetherness ahead of time
Gone too are the geographic limits restraining you to connect only with those within a reasonable commute
Digitally, you can pick from your whole network
And quarantines have further opened our options by emptying parts of our calendars.
Absent those frictions, what shines through is our
We can connect with who we want and accomplish what we want
Spontaneous apps open the channel so our impulsive human nature can shine through.
