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Tag: clubhouse

  • Rapha Spins Retail and Community in New Shanghai Clubhouse: A Modern Hub for Cyclists

    Rapha Spins Retail and Community in New Shanghai Clubhouse: A Modern Hub for Cyclists

    Rapha, the prominent cycling brand, has established its premier Clubhouse in Mainland China, situated in Shanghai, in collaboration with Seen Studios, a creative design agency. This venture signifies the brand’s debut in Mainland China and presents an opportunity for Rapha to extend its unique retail-community model to Chinese consumers.

    Integrating Retail, Community, and Cycling Culture

    Debuted in London in 2012, the Clubhouse concept is a fusion of retail, café culture, and live events, which serve as a vibrant meeting point for cycling enthusiasts. Rapha’s Clubhouses can be found in numerous locations across Europe, North America, and the Asia Pacific, epitomizing the brand’s global reach.

    Alex Edwards, the Design Director at Seen Studios, expressed that the objective behind the inception of the Shanghai Clubhouse was to construct an environment that not only embodies cycling traditions but also caters to the contemporary rider community. “In collaboration, we have built a space that transcends being just a store to become a cycling cultural hub,” Edwards noted. He further emphasized the elements incorporated into the design, such as the inviting aura of Italian café culture, the practical sophistication of 1950s design, and Rapha’s commitment to fostering connections and preserving craftsmanship.

    Classy Interiors and Rich History

    Rapha’s Clubhouse in Shanghai, housed within a restored mansion dating back to 1925, marks the site’s first retail tenancy. The interior design of the Clubhouse is an ode to Italian café style and mid-century architecture, with an elegant combination of materials like walnut, stainless steel, white oak, and ceramic tiling. The design is accentuated with subtle pink highlights, which add a touch of charm to the space.

    In addition, functional elements have been incorporated into the design, including helmet hooks and café tiles featuring patterns inspired by the iconic Roubaix race. These thoughtful touches reflect the brand’s deep understanding and respect for cycling culture.

    The Future of Rapha in China

    Fran Millar, CEO of Rapha, voiced that the Shanghai Clubhouse is a testament to the burgeoning cycling community in China. She emphasized, “Cycling has the potential to transform lives, and this is particularly evident in China at present.”

    With an optimistic outlook on the future of the brand in the region, Millar added, “The Rapha Shanghai Clubhouse will serve as a home to the flourishing local cycling community and will pave the way for an exciting new phase in our endeavor to create the world’s most extraordinary cycling club.”

    Questions & Answers

    What is the concept behind Rapha’s Clubhouses?
    Rapha’s Clubhouses are a blend of retail, café culture, and live events, aiming to serve as a communal hub for cycling enthusiasts.

    What design elements have been incorporated into the Shanghai Clubhouse?
    The Shanghai Clubhouse’s design incorporates Italian café influences and mid-century architecture, featuring walnut, stainless steel, white oak, and ceramic tiling. Functional elements include helmet hooks and café tiles inspired by the Roubaix race.

    What does the establishment of the Shanghai Clubhouse mean for Rapha’s future in China?
    Rapha CEO, Fran Millar, sees the Shanghai Clubhouse as a testament to the thriving cycling community in China. She believes it will pave the way for an exciting new phase in Rapha’s mission to create the world’s most extraordinary cycling club.

  • Clubhouse gets a text chat feature for live audio rooms

    Clubhouse gets a text chat feature for live audio rooms

    Clubhouse, an audio chat app that debuted back in 2020 as an exclusive social network, is now adding a feature that seems to be contrary to its initial live audio chat purpose. 9to5Mac reports that there is a major change to the app coming, and will let users interact in voice rooms with text chat.

    Clubhouse’s live audio chat was an idea that was quickly followed by competitors such as Twitter and Reddit. Now, the app is going to add a text chat option for people who don’t feel like they want to talk in the live audio chat rooms.

    The app has announced in its official blog that there is a new feature that would allow everyone to be able to join live conversations, whether by voice or text. The new addition to Clubhouse’s feature set is dubbed “In-Room Chat”, and it works in a similar manner to Zoom or Skype. Basically, you will be able to chat within a live audio room.

    The blog post reads that the feature will be useful to share jokes, request songs, or send emojis as reactions to what’s being talked about.

    On top of that, voice room moderators will be able to delete chat messages. Basically, creators can appoint mods to keep an eye on the chat and delete messages if found inappropriate.

    Understandably though, if the room has hundreds or thousands of people, the task of moderating chat comments will indeed prove to be quite difficult.

    As a creator, you will also be able to delete chat messages at any moment, and even after the live session has ended. Additionally, you will be able to turn off the In-Room chat at any moment as well, if it proves to be unproductive or annoying.

    Creators can choose to disable text chat when starting a new audio room if they don’t feel like having the feature. Additionally, the audience will also be able to report comments in the chat and provide feedback to moderators, so that the text chat is safe from trolls.

    Another useful feature of the In-Room chat option is that you will be able to delete your comment during the live room or after the live room has ended.

    Audio rooms that have chat enabled will appear with a dedicated icon at the bottom left of the screen. When the live audio ends, all messages sent during the session will be available for reading to anyone listening to the Replay of the session.

    But that’s not all the new feature is expected to bring. The social network says that the text chat will give creators an option to make quick polls or ask questions in a live chat with multiple people.

    The new In-Room Chat feature is currently rolling out with the latest version of the Clubhouse app from the App Store.

    As you may probably know, initially, the Clubhouse app was available only on iOS and Android devices. In January though, Clubhouse expanded its platform to the web, and with this, anyone could listen to a live chat. However, it is still not possible to join from the web as a speaker during live audio sessions.

    The option to listen to a live audio chat on Clubhouse from your desktop doesn’t require you to be logged in, so basically creators can share live audio chats with multiple people (only for listening on the web though, as we said, it is not possible to join to talk from your PC or Mac).

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  • Clubhouse to end invitation system this summer; over 2 million install the Android app

    Clubhouse to end invitation system this summer; over 2 million install the Android app

    Roughly a couple of weeks ago, popular group audio chat app Clubhouse finally made its debut on the Google Play Store although invites are still required to become a Clubhouse subscriber. This past Sunday, Clubhouse held a Town Hall meeting on the app and discussed what it has experienced since allowing the vast majority of smartphone users to install the app.

    In a tweet sent out following the Town Hall, Clubhouse noted that it now has over 2 million Android subscribers which double the 1 million Android users it had after the previous week. Since Clubhouse launched in March 2020 in the App Store and was available only on iOS until now, the number of subscribers on Apple’s mobile platform, over 10 million, currently swamps the number of Android users. And while the Android version of the Clubhouse app has yet to reach feature parity to the iOS variant, it is getting closer every day.

    More exciting though, is the statement that Clubhouse is “heading for general release sometime this summer!” That would mean the end of invites and should greatly expand the usage of the app. As a result, Clubhouse says that its next few updates will be about “discovery, notifications, and less visible but very crucial improvements” as it gears up for a massive surge in usage.

    Clubhouse does have its competition with many big names in social media having started something similar or announcing that a similar feature is on the way. And several Clubhouse users have been complaining about how glitchy the app has been with some users getting kicked out of a room in mid-sentence. So the company does face some hard work ahead.

  • Clubhouse for Android beta now in the Play Store

    Clubhouse for Android beta now in the Play Store

    Audio-only group chat app Clubhouse was extremely popular at the beginning of the year. At the time, the app, which requires an invitation to join, was only available in the Apple App Store. In late March, Clubhouse founder Paul Davison said that an Android version of the app was still months away, but today Clubhouse announced that a beta version of its Android app has become available on the Google Play Store.

    The app certainly needs the boost that will occur from being available on the platform that the vast majority of smartphone users around the world have installed on their devices. Consider that in February, the app was installed 9.6 million times worldwide with 2.7 million installs rung up during the following month. But in April, that number dropped to 922,000 downloads globally.

    Without the necessary invitation, all you can do with the Android app is reserve your username and get put on a waiting list. Eventually, the invitations will disappear and Clubhouse will be open for anyone to join. But at the moment, without an invite, you are not getting into the clubhouse regardless of the platform you are using.

    “With Android, we believe that Clubhouse will feel more complete. We are so grateful to all of the Android users out there for their patience,” co-founders Davison and Rohan Seth wrote in a company blog post. “Whether you are a creator, a club organizer, or someone who just wants to explore, we are so excited to welcome you to the community.”

    The early success of Clubhouse has spawned a number of copycats including Twitter’s Spaces. It seems that all of the big social media names want to have a presence in this space so the competition is going to continue to pick up. Clubhouse still has the advantage of being first although its invitation system might feel like a big turn-off to those who would love to be using the app right away.

    Still, this has been Clubhouse’s plan from the beginning. As it pointed out in today’s blog post, “We’ve always taken a measured approach to growth, keeping the team small, building in public, and getting feedback from the community along the way. When you scale communities too quickly, things can break. So we started Clubhouse on a single platform and have expanded gradually through an invite model.”

    Being placed on the waiting list can help you snag an invite, or if you know an existing user, you can ask him or her for one. The app is launching today in the U.S. followed by other English-speaking countries, and then the rest of the world. Clubhouse says that over the next few weeks, it plans to ask for feedback from the community, fix issues, and add new features such as “payments and club creation.”

    As for the invitations, Clubhouse says that it will keep “growth measured” by continuing the current system although it will open up some more during the summer. It expects millions of of more iOS users to join the more than 10 million iOS users who have already installed the app.

    You can now install the Clubhouse for Android beta from the Google Play Store, but be careful. There is already an app called Clubhouse that has nothing to do with the one we are looking for. So make sure that you search for Clubhouse: Drop-in Audio Chat. To save you some time, simply tap right here. The iOS version of Clubhouse, also using the title Clubhouse: Drop-in Audio Chat, can be installed from the Apple App Store.

    It will be interesting to see what the future holds for Clubhouse and for the format of audio-only group chat.

  • Facebook set to announce new audio products – Recode

    Facebook set to announce new audio products – Recode

    Facebook will announce a series of products under the umbrella of “social audio” on Monday, including its take on audio-chat app Clubhouse and a push into podcast discovery and distribution, Recode reported on Sunday.

    These plans include an audio version of Rooms, a video-conferencing product Facebook launched a year ago. The Clubhouse-like product will let groups of people listen to and interact with speakers on a virtual “stage”.

    Facebook will also launch a product allowing its users to record brief voice messages and post them in their newsfeeds, and a podcast discovery product that will be connected with Spotify, according to the report, which cited sources.

    The announcement will be made on Monday but some products will not show up for a while, the report added.

    A Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment. Spotify did not immediately respond to a request for comment on

    Facebook started public testing of a new application dubbed Hotline earlier this month, where creators can speak and take live questions from an audience.

    This Q&A product combines audio with text and video elements and comes as social media platforms experiment with a rush of new live audio features.

    The success of the invite-only, year-old app Clubhouse, which has reported 10 million weekly active users, has demonstrated the potential of audio chat services, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Twitter has been testing its audio feature Spaces and Facebook is also dabbling with a live audio room offering within its Messenger Rooms.

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  • 1.3 million Clubhouse users have their personal data leaked

    1.3 million Clubhouse users have their personal data leaked

    For those who have been fast asleep for the last few months, one of the fastest-growing apps has been Clubhouse. It is an audio-only chatroom and at the moment it requires an invitation to join. It also is only available for iOS and a version for Android is reportedly months away.

    Cybercrooks have used Clubhouse for some of their nefarious schemes including one we told you about yesterday. Fake ads on Facebook attempted to get victims to join the non-existent Clubhouse for PC. Signing up for this fake software resulted in malware being sent to users’ devices although the ads have been discontinued.

    The latest issue to pop up around Clubhouse is a major leak that exposed 1.3 million scraped user records. The incident occurred a few days after more than one billion user records from Facebook and LinkedIn were offered for sale online. The difference is that the Clubhouse records were leaked for free on a widely read hacker site.

    The data that was leaked included a subscriber’s User ID, Name, Photo URL, Username, Twitter handle, Instagram handle, Number of followers, Number of people followed by the user, Account creation date and the user profile name used by the person who invited this subscriber. In other words, it is a treasure trove of information for hackers.

    Clubhouse has responded by saying that it has not experienced a data breach and that some of the information supposedly leaked has been available for free via the company’s API. That alone brings up some questions about the user privacy policy put into place by Clubhouse. Why should there be a need for all of this data to be available (financial information like credit card numbers were not included)?

  • Twitter was in talks to buy Clubhouse for as much as $4 billion

    Twitter was in talks to buy Clubhouse for as much as $4 billion

    Clubhouse recently held conversations with Twitter over a possible acquisition of the popular audio-only social media app. Citing “people familiar with the matter,” today’s report said that the price tag of a possible purchase of Clubhouse went as high as $4 billion. Talks are no longer taking place although the reason why is not clear.

    Once the talks with Twitter broke down, Clubhouse reportedly decided that it would be better to raise money via a new round of funding from investors that valued the firm at about $4 billion. Clubhouse allows members to host audio chats similar to talk radio with guest interviews and panel discussions. While only a year old, Clubhouse has already hosted some big names as guests including Bill Gates who admitted his preference for Android over iOS on the platform back in February.

    Twitter has already started beta testing its own version of Clubhouse which it calls Spaces. The latter launched late last year and while Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is said to be high on the concept of audio chats on Twitter, Spaces has yet to fully roll out to all Twitter users. Bruce Falck, the head of revenue product at Twitter, said at a press event today that the company is looking at ways to monetize Spaces.

    Other big names in the tech sector are hopping aboard this train as firms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Slack are supposedly looking to add Clubhouse-like capabilities to their apps. Right now, subscribers can become a member of Clubhouse by invitation only, and the app is available only in the Apple App Store. Last month Clubhouse founder Paul Davison said that it might take “a couple of months” for an Android version of the app to appear.

    Clubhouse’s growth is throttled at the moment by its invite-only rule. Still, the growth potential is immense at current rates. In December, the app was believed to have 600,000 weekly active users and that number hit ten million weekly active users in February according to Davison.

  • Facebook is reportedly developing a Clubhouse clone

    Facebook is reportedly developing a Clubhouse clone

    According to inside sources, Facebook is working on an audio chat app similar to the popular Clubhouse. The new app is probably under development in Facebook’s skunkworks division – the NPE Team (New Product Experimental).

    The information comes from two people in the industry, who were not authorized to speak publicly. As the story goes, Facebook high management was so impressed with Clubhouse that it ordered employees to create a similar app. Clubhouse gained popularity mostly with its exclusivity – the app is available only for iPhones and is currently in beta, requiring an invitation.

    Last month, Elon Musk appeared on Clubhouse being interviewed by two tech experts, boosting tremendously the app popularity. To the point where servers struggled to deal with the overload. Now, it’s interesting that Facebook is so eager to launch another voice chat app. Especially when the social network has already tried to do something similar in the past.

    Some of you might remember CatchUp – an advanced voice call app that offers one-on-one calls, dedicated groups, and users’ current status (muted, dialing, online, etc.). Facebook developed it under the same NPE Team last spring, but it quickly fell into obscurity. Some might argue that it’d be much easier for Facebook to just acquire Clubhouse while it’s still green (and cheap) like it did with Instagram and WhatsApp.

    The official comment from Facebook doesn’t bring anything to light, as expected. “We’ve been connecting people through audio and video technologies for many years and are always exploring new ways to improve that experience for people,” Emilie Haskell, a Facebook spokeswoman, said. In any case, it will be interesting to see where this one goes, so stay tuned.

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  • Clubhouse app blocked in China, added to ‘Great Firewall’, say users

    Clubhouse app blocked in China, added to ‘Great Firewall’, say users

    Access to U.S. audio app Clubhouse was blocked in China on Monday, users and an anti-censorship watchdog said, ending a brief window that allowed thousands of mainland users to join in discussions often censored in China.

    Launched in early 2020, Clubhouse’s global user numbers soared earlier this month after Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev held a surprise discussion on the platform.

    Masses of new users joined from mainland China, taking part in discussions on topics that included sensitive issues such as Xinjiang detention camps, Taiwan independence and Hong Kong’s National Security Law.

    However, users of China’s Twitter-like social media app Weibo began posting that they were having issues accessing the Clubhouse app on Monday evening. Some showed screenshots of a message the app displayed when they tried to open it which said a secure connection to the server could not be made.

    Anti-censorship activist website GreatFire.org said on Twitter late on Monday that the app had been blocked for users in China at around 7 p.m. Beijing time (1100 GMT) that day.

    Many Western social media apps including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are banned in China, where the local internet is tightly regulated and often censored of content that could undermine the country’s ruling Communist Party.

    Clubhouse did not respond to requests for comment. The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s top internet regulator, did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment.

    “Clubhouse has been walled,” said one Weibo user on Monday, referring to the system China uses to regulate its internet.

    “This is just too fast,” said another.

    Many Weibo posts discussing the blocking of the app were deleted from the platform by Tuesday morning.

    The Clubhouse app is only available on iOS devices and is unavailable in the local Apple app store in China, but mainland Chinese users had been able to access the app by modifying the location of their app store.

    As first reports of the internet disruptions began on Monday, nearly 3,000 users opened a room in Clubhouse to discuss whether it had been blocked by Chinese censors, with some expressing concerns that authorities could be monitoring discussions.

    Some users urged others not to panic.

    “Let bullets fly for a while. Let’s monitor for a few days first, don’t panic yet,” one user said.

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  • Introducing Clubhouse, the invite-only alternative to Linkedin

    Introducing Clubhouse, the invite-only alternative to Linkedin

    Forget The Nice Guy or Soho House. The place to find Hollywood and Silicon Valley powerhouses during the pandemic has been on Clubhouse, the invite-only, audio-driven app that’s quickly gaining steam as a networking tool for those looking to make it in the entertainment and tech worlds.

    Hop on Clubhouse at any given time and you could stumble into conversations led by Wiz Khalifa, Tiffany Haddish, Ava DuVernay, Ashton Kutcher, Brian Koppelman or Scooter Braun, among several other celebs. Kevin Hart, in a story that’s already solidified in Clubhouse lore, recently took part in an hours-long conversation focused on whether he was, in fact, funny. And on the tech side, Clubhouse is packed with entrepreneurs like former Twitter CEO Ev Williams, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, and former Y Combinator President Sam Altman, along with a laundry list of angel investors and venture capitalists.

    Clubhouse isn’t complicated: Users can go on the app and join a “room” where a particular conversation is going on. Often, these conversations are focused on business and networking topics; “Pivoting from live events to virtual events + sponsorships” and “virtual writing cafe” were two rooms pulling in users on Monday, for example. Once inside, users can listen to the discussion and, if approved by the room moderator, chime in and join the conversation themselves. It’s not uncommon to see rooms with a few dozen speakers and a few hundred users listening in.

    Since launching in April, the app has grown to over 100,000 beta users, according to an individual familiar with the company’s internal metrics. The app’s early traction helped it land a $12 million round of funding from Andreessen Horowitz, valuing Clubhouse at $100 million.

    As the new, go-to spot to listen to entrepreneurs and stars, Clubhouse has also become the audio version of LinkedIn for those looking to make connections in Hollywood. Even in normal times, making it in the movie business is tough enough. But for Sade Sellers, a 31-year-old screenwriter from Burbank, California, one of the many problems tied to the pandemic has been the end to casual networking events — coffee meet-ups with executives, conferences and post-work drinks with people in the film industry — that have helped her career grow.

  • A golden cube houses % Arabica Hong Kong’s newest store

    A golden cube houses % Arabica Hong Kong’s newest store

    Dutch architecture studio OMA has installed a golden cube housing a cafe outside K11 Musea mall in Hong Kong.

    The “Kube” kiosk, housing artisan coffee brewer % Arabica Hong Kong’s newest outlet, also features black marble furniture and is designed to resemble a traditional dai pai dong food stall.

    “The Kube is a multifunction installation to connect people visiting K11 Musea and passersby who share a moment to be fully present to experience the city, and possibilities of encounters,” OMA managing partner David Gianotten said.

    The kiosk is coated in an anodized aluminum cladding that appears to change hue in different light conditions.

    “What David Gianotten and Rem Koolhaas’ Kube adds to K11 Musea is … more than an iconic OMA feature,” said K11 Group founder Adrian Cheng, “but a symbolic space that explores Hong Kong’s waterfront culture, coffee culture and a new way to become part of a larger community.”

    OMA is hoping the installation will be used for public events and performances.