Pauleanna Reid never expected to find love on Clubhouse. She quickly moved their conversation to texting and then to phone calls and Zooms. Two weeks later, Reid, a year-old celebrity ghostwriter , flew from Toronto to Washington, D. She spent the next month with her now partner, and their relationship is now stronger than ever. Founded in , Clubhouse is an invite-only, audio-based app that gained early popularity with the Silicon Valley crowd.
Its reputation is something akin to a virtual watering hole for men in tech, finance, and venture capital who love to hear themselves talk. At least that was my impression when I joined the platform in January and stumbled into a few rooms on topics like entrepreneurship, blockchain, and cryptocurrency.
Notably, Clubhouse only provides one small photo per profileβthe rest of the app is guided purely on audio. Clubhouse does not yet have a direct-messaging feature. If Instagram is image forward and Twitter is dependent on clever quips, Clubhouse is maybe closer to real life, where people, you know, get to know each other by talking.
Indeed, while not its intended purpose, Clubhouse may soon rival traditional dating apps. Now is the perfect time for itβthe pandemic has only intensified virtual dating, especially among millennials and Gen Z. Aside from chance encounters in standard discussion rooms, there are more explicit ways of using the app to date. There, listeners raise their hands a feature on the app to go onstage i. Kerrigan then asks icebreaker questions, after which interested parties can message the speakers they like.
Kerrigan also praised the nonvisual component of the app. From there a brief, though public, conversation occurs, and then the pair can decide whether to connect privately. Think The Bachelor meets speed dating meets a conference call.
