Clubhouse: Everything You Need to Know about Clubhouse
I first heard about this app from a colleague. He wanted me to listen in on a conversation about music. I was thrilled and instantly wanted to know more about this app. Turns out, the app was Clubhouse but I couldn’t get it because I wasn’t an iPhone user yet. Fast forward to a month after that and I got an iPhone. I wanted to finally understand how the legendary clubhouse app worked. If you are just like I was, wonder no more as I would be spilling the tea on how this app; clubhouse, works. What is Clubhouse? Clubhouse is an iPhone-only voice chatting app where users can create and join rooms for different conversations. It was developed by Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Paul Davison, and former Google employee, Rohan Seth. While the app is solely for iPhone users, for now, there are plans underway to make it available for android users as well. How do I Join Clubhouse? You have to first be an iPhone user. Then proceed to the App Store and download it to reserve your username on a waiting list. However, that’s how far you can go without an invitation, plus there’s no guarantee that you will ever get an account that way. Clubhouse is practically invite-only. Thus, anyone that wants to join, has to be invited by an already existing member with an account. So, once you receive an invite, click on the link, download the app, and set up your profile. You can set up a profile photo, a bio, and link any relevant social media accounts. The app will just, as usual, alert your friends that you are now a member, you can follow them and them, you. How does Clubhouse Work? In Clubhouse, users can enter into different rooms to listen, or join in on conversations (be careful not to accidentally join rooms that would make you uncomfortable). In those rooms, there are no pictures or videos except the faces on the profile. You only get to hear voices. The person who created the room, the moderator, gets to choose the participants they want to join the conversation. They can have as many people as they want “on stage” with them. They also get to invite and remove people from the stage as time goes on. When the person on stage is not the one speaking, they are advised to mute, so as to enable the speaker to speak audibly. Also, when someone on stage wants to speak, they too have to wait their turn before they unmute themselves and speak. In the same vein, if a member of the audience desires to speak, they can raise their hands and wait to be invited on stage by the moderator. Since they are all supposed to be muted when you are talking, how do you know when they are in support of what you are saying? Or simply put, how’s excitement and support for a point been made, shown? You can flip your mute buttons on and off quickly for that. How Do I Join Groups on ClubHouse? After the sign-up process, you can select your interests and be given options for groups to join. Choose whatever niche you want to be a part of – from social media to fashion, beauty, the editorial world, etc. Clubhouse handles different topics, from religion to dating, to sports, to pop culture, and a lot more. Some groups are particular about business, networking, while others are fun groups for good laughs. Fundamentally, Clubhouse can be whatever you choose to make it – entertaining, or solely professional. Once you join the groups, you will get access to what groups they are hosting and joining in. You can also search for topics of interest to you on the explore page. Why is Clubhouse App So Popular? There are a couple of reasons this app is as popular as it is now. A standout reason was they launched it early in the pandemic when being with people in an enclosed environment and conversing was impossible. So, people leveraged this new app that allowed them the opportunity of joining a room and hearing other humans talk, albeit virtually. The exclusivity Clubhouse offers also played a good part here. It was a classic case of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) because people love the things they can’t readily have. Nevertheless, they attracted some pretty big names on the app, and it unequivocally encouraged more people to sign up and listen to their favorite talk. Which Celebrities are on Clubhouse App? There are a bunch of celebrities joining Clubhouse every day. From Tory Burch, Virgil Abloh, to other big fashion names to Tiffany Haddish, Drake, Oprah, and Kevin Hart. Actor Jared Leto, filmmaker Ava DuVernay, and Silicon Valley elite like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and others. Among the Clubhouse, ranks are Oprah, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, actor Terry Crews, CBS This Morning host Gayle King, and venture capitalists like Mark Cuban, Marc Andreesen, and Reddit founder, Alexis Ohanian. Currently, the app boasts a whopping 10.1 million users and has expanded to include popular podcast hosts and social-media stars such as Lindsey Metselaar, and Serena Kerrigan, who use the platform to host more private discussions with their friends and followers. The exclusivity of Clubhouse offers high-profile users a sense of security and allows them to engage in interesting conversations. For example, while MC Hammer is known for hosting rooms about cryptocurrencies, Kevin Hart drops in on debates about whether he is even funny and more. Clubhouse is one where you’ve got to be there to follow conversations. None of the conversations are recorded, and it does not make transcripts available after the conversations. So, celebrities (and you) don’t have to fear that everything they say on Clubhouse will become a news headline. What Comes Next for Clubhouse? Clubhouse’s reputation was built with conversations hosted by big personalities like Oprah Winfrey, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk. Now, the app is already considered
10 Tips for Developing a Fantastic Mobile-Friendly Website
If you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, then you’re losing so much traffic to your competitors. The world has gradually adopted mobile devices as the first line of communication and research, so anyone who wants to learn about you or your business first searches about you – and many of them use their mobile devices. Statista believes that mobile accounts for approximately half of the web traffic worldwide. In the third quarter of 2020, mobile devices generated 50.81% of global website traffic, consistently hovering around the 50% mark since the beginning of 2017. These data communicate the heightened importance of having a mobile-friendly website. Apart from the huge traffic you can get, there is so much more optimizing your website for mobile can do for you. So, this is the core conversation in this article, much attention will be given to how mobile optimization has strengthened. How Do I Know If My Website is Mobile-Friendly? If you have a new website, then the chances of your website are optimized for mobile is great. However, you need to run a complete check to be extra sure your website is mobile-friendly. Google has a mobile-friendly testing tool. In using this tool, you only need to input the URL of your website and it will run an automatic check. Apart from getting an answer on the mobile-friendliness of your website, you will receive a screenshot of how your page pops on a smartphone screen and a list of recommendations to improve the overall mobile experience. If the tool signals your website needs a lot of work, then you need to pay key attention to the problems and create top-notch solutions for each of them. By executing this, you improve your website’s visibility in the search engines, ensure more of your visitors stick around and improve conversions on your site. Alternatively, if you get an excellent report, then you don’t need to prioritize updating your website. But never stop considering ways to improve the mobile experience of your users. 10 Tips for Developing a Fantastic Mobile-Friendly Website When you want to develop a mobile-friendly website, you need to follow the right steps so you don’t cause irrecoverable damage to your website. Some of the tips you should follow include: 1. Choose Mobile Responsive Template Building a responsive website is the best way to create a site that functions effectively and optimally across mobile and desktop. All designers believe this because a responsive website contains every content and information you can access through all your devices, but the site aligns to portray itself depending on the device used in displaying it. For example, when you visit LinkedIn with your mobile device, you get to access a page that portrays the key features of the platform with most of the icons on the bottom end of the screen. When you use your desktop to view this same website, the interphase is bigger as you can see jobs, opportunities and so much more on the same homepage screen. With a quality, responsive design, you can make your website mobile-friendly without limiting the information your mobile visitors can access—they still get all the same content the rest of your visitors do. And responsive design is also good for SEO. Google directly recommends it. Even if you don’t know how to build a responsive website, that’s not really a problem as you can access a lot of resource tools to help you. And even when those tools don’t give you what you really desire, then you can take the next big step. 2. Apply Shorter Paragraphs and Sentences Reading on large devices has been difficult, and when you now bring a smaller device and fill a paragraph with chunks of text, you worsen the case. Even Readable believes simply shortening the length of your sentences will lead to the most impressive effect on the readability score. Instead of using long paragraphs, break them into brief paragraphs and try to keep your sentences below twenty words. Even if you’re still going on a train of thought, you can create a divergence to continue it on a new paragraph. 3. Use Light Images A light website is vital when you want it to be mobile-friendly. Because almost every website has plugins and files that have some weight, they can pull down the website speed and make it very difficult for mobile users who would experience a slow loading time. Google strongly believes that website speed is a vital ranking factor. The Search team announced speed would be a ranking signal for desktop searches in 2010 and as of (July 2018), page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches too. Well, we’ve seen how accelerated mobile pages take stronger priority compared to others. When it comes to mobile, this is so vital. If you’ve ever tried to load a webpage somewhere remote, the slow loading time can be so frustrating, You might wait for up to a minute for a single page to load and you might just give up your goal. 4. Avoid Flash According to CMN, FLASH is a bandwidth-friendly and browser-independent vector-graphic animation technology. There are benefits to using websites developed in FLASH and several drawbacks that can influence a person’s ability to surf the web pages effectively. Flash creates an interesting animation design for a website, but with more emphasis on functionality and little on design, you need to investigate how using a FLASH is really important. Apart from the fact that search engine bots can not read flash pages, they make surfing through a website difficult for any user. For example, when you visit a flash website and you click a certain button if you want to return to the previous page and you press “back”, the flash functionality doesn’t support such a move. 5. Use Buttons Carefully Large buttons might not look aesthetically correct for a designer. So, the next line of action would be to reduce the size of the button tremendously. However, when a user cannot press a button on your