In da Club

The drop-in audio chat app “Clubhouse” has been conquering the German social media world for two weeks now. You can only join the social network by personal invitation. However, the new hype app is not reserved solely for pseudo-hip media makers, influencers or politicians like Bodo Ramelow who talk out of the closet. Why we planners should also pay attention to the app.

The “Clubhouse” app has been trending in Apple’s App Store for two weeks. It is a social media app that the Clubhouse founders themselves describe as a “drop-in audio chat”. Thuringia’s Minister President Bodo Ramelow, in particular, made it famous by referring to Angela Merkel as “the little Merkel” in a Clubhouse chat and admitting to playing “Candy Crush” at the minister presidents’ conferences. But that’s another story and he has probably since apologized personally to the Chancellor.

Clubhouse is currently only available in the Apple App Store, but will soon also be available for Android, as n-tv reported last Sunday. Anyone who has received a personal invitation can use the app. “Maximum elitism” is what some might think, and yes, that’s true. At the same time, the artificial thresholds are a central part of the hype. According to the developers, the app is still in a test phase.

Clubhouse went online in the USA in spring 2020 and, according to information from CNBC, was valued at almost 100 million US dollars in mid-May following an investment of 12 million US dollars by a venture capital company. With only around 1,500 users. In Germany, the app went through the roof after the two podcast hosts Philipp Klöckner and Philipp Gloeckler called for mutual invitations via a Telegram group – in order to make the app available to a wider public. According to t3n, Clubhouse now has almost one million users in Germany.

Okay, the thresholds for getting “in” to Clubhouse are high, but once you are “in”, the app is characterized by maximum low-threshold user-friendliness. Clubhouse is very easy to use and is self-explanatory. The activity is based on a social network that is set up in a similar way to Facebook or Instagram, as well as areas of interest that users can select specifically – such as “Architecture” (and yes, the entire app is in English). Based on the network and areas of interest, users are suggested so-called “rooms” that they can enter and listen to the conversations in. The talks are moderated by individual users themselves. You can simply listen or digitally “raise your hand” to actively participate in the discussion. Like a participatory story podcast, somehow.

The downsides of Clubhouse

So much for the pure functionality of the app. Is Clubhouse just cool now? Well, everything has its downsides. Many voices define data protection as inadequate. This includes the Rhineland-Palatinate data protection officer Dieter Kugelmann. According to him, Clubhouse is very likely in breach of the European General Data Protection Regulation, reports dpa. Among other things, there is a lack of transparency regarding which data the app stores permanently. Users have no way of tracking what exactly happens to their data. A problem that is not entirely new to us in the wake of the new terms of use for the WhatsApp messaging service. By now, however, everyone will have realized that the messenger service “Signal” is probably a good alternative – after all, Elon Musk and Edward Snowden did a great job of promoting the alternative messenger service on Twitter.

More downsides? The Clubhouse moderators have not yet been able to prevent acoustic hate comments when users are “loud”. Users can be reported for misconduct, but this requires the Clubhouse conversation to be saved, which is difficult from a data point of view.

A call to Joko Winterscheidt

So Clubhouse is elitist, yes. The app has data protection problems and enables so-called “hate speech” to be noted. At the same time, it’s also a lot of fun. But why is it and why could Clubhouse also be of increased interest to us planners in the future? Because it’s incredibly easy to get into conversation with each other. The discussions have something intimate, natural and friendly about them. It’s not for nothing that Bodo was so forthcoming.

A Clubhouse talk feels like a phone call, you talk to friends or people from your own network, but you also meet strangers with whom you feel a connection over a topic or even people with a higher profile such as Joko Winterscheidt, who now has 90,000 followers on Clubhouse. And you can participate according to your mood, there is no compulsion. You don’t have to expose yourself as you would in a panel discussion, for example.

Clubhouse talks offer exchange and inspiration. And of course, this is exactly what the current lockdown is inhibiting, at least for those who don’t have any major problems at the moment. Here, too, it is probably a first-world problem. In an analysis on spiegel.de, Markus Böhm and Max Hoppenstedt even discussed who will still be going to the Clubhouse when the pandemic is over.

Us planners in the Clubhouse? Oh yes.

Yesterday’s Clubhouse talk “Berliners or pancakes – on the identity of a city”, put on by Tagesspiegel journalists Anne-Kathrin Hipp, Anke Myrrhe and Lorenz Maroldt, illustrated why we planners should also be out and about at Clubhouse in future – pandemic or not. One of the questions they posed in this Clubhouse talk was how to ensure that Berlin remains Berlin in the future despite urban development interventions and “growing pains”.

While one Clubhouse user responded charmingly with “Gemeinsam anders – dit is Berlin”, Florian Schmidt (B’90/Die Grünen), city councillor for construction in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, proposed an IBA of the districts, i.e. an International Building Exhibition of the Berlin districts. According to him, however, the idea then hung in a vacuum and was not discussed any further. This is where it would have been exciting to continue the discussion, to pick up the other users on what an IBA actually is, should be, where its limits lie, but also its potential – and hardly any other profession can do this as well as the planning discipline.

An opportunity that we should seize

The topics discussed at Clubhouse are close to people, close to the reality of our lives. Topics such as urban development. Over the past ten years, urban development as a social task has moved to the center of public debate. It affects us all. And let’s be honest: it’s a really great topic, full of possibilities and visions. But – and I know I’m repeating myself here – our profession has been and remains very quiet in this societal discourse so far, making very little noise. Clubhouse offers us planners, but also us specialist journalists, the opportunity to get into conversation with each other in a very low-threshold way – and that’s somehow just cool.

How many planners often regret after public participation processes that the same people usually come to the relevant events and that there is a lack of diversity and youth, especially in public exchange. How many planner events do we always attend with the same noses? Nice noses, but just the same ones. The people who click through the Clubhouse rooms here, we could open up completely new discussion groups with them. We should take advantage of that, shouldn’t we?