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Clubhouse Adds New ‘Wave’ Option to Prompt Spontaneous Group Chats

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clubhouse adds new wave option to prompt spontaneous group chats

Remember Clubhouse, that buzzy, audio-centric social app that everyone was clamoring to join when they needed an invite to do so, but then lost interest in as soon as the invite-only restriction was lifted?

Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration on the drop-off interest, but there has been a pretty clear decline in mentions of the app in recent times.

But for those who are still keen on the app, Clubhouse has this week added a new functionality which leans into a different use case for the platform, in facilitating spontaneous social hang-outs and meet-ups among friends.

As you can see in this video overview, Clubhouse has added a new ‘Wave’ option, which enables you to signal to your connections when you’re active in the app, and open for a chat. If they’re interested, you can then start a smaller, private room – a broom closet, if that’s not stretching the metaphor too much – where just you and your friends can hang out, away from the more topic-focused discussions in the main rooms.  

As explained by Clubhouse:

Here on Clubhouse, more than 700,000 rooms are created every single day. Many of these are the communal moments that you know and love, but it’s often the smaller private moments amongst friends that put smiles on faces: birthdays, long-overdue catch-ups, watching a movie long-distance, making plans for the weekend, or just hanging out on a Thursday night.

The Wave option caters to these use cases, which, much like live-streaming before it, sees audio social now expanding into more private chats and hang-outs, providing another way to stay in touch with friends, at any time – which could be perfect for our still lockdown-limited interactions.

A similar template, in this case, is Houseparty, which gained significant traction a few years back as a live-stream hangout tool for younger users.

Houseparty screenshots

While the main focus of live-streaming, in general, was broadcasting yourself, Houseparty took a different approach, which quickly caught on, with the app racing to 20 million users shortly after launch, while it had more than 1.2 million daily actives after just 8 months on the market.  

That caught the attention of Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, which purchased Houseparty in 2019, with a view to making it the complementary platform for Fortnite players who also wanted to hang out virtually – to see their teammates, as opposed to just hearing them.

That particular use case never caught on, and Epic recently announced that it will be shutting Houseparty down permanently in October. But for a time, Houseparty had tuned into a key trend for streaming that others had missed, in connecting smaller groups, as opposed to public broadcasting, and facilitating casual meet-ups with friends who were up for hanging out at any given time.

Given that use case, it makes sense for Clubhouse to explore the same, and you can see how the option could be of benefit, adding more potential usage options to the app. And maybe, that will help it carve out a more specific niche, because while Clubhouse was the app of the moment a few months back, it clearly won’t be able to sustain its engagement momentum, and with competitors looking to muscle it out of the market, it’ll need to find a key niche – or maybe a few niches – to solidify its place in the broader social sphere.

Spontaneous hangouts could be a part of that, while Clubhouse is still gaining traction in markets outside the US, particularly India, where audio tools tend to facilitate more functionality due to varying barriers in written communication, as well as data restrictions that limit video usage.

So while it’s not the shiny new thing, and Twitter Spaces looks set to become the main audio social platform of choice, Clubhouse does still have various opportunities to explore – and it also recently hired former Instagram entertainment partnerships manager Chelsea Macdonald to help it drive more connections with established and emerging stars and creators.

In addition to this, Clubhouse is also working on new audio ‘Clips’ tool, which would provide another way to share clips from Clubhouse chats, which could be another way to build buzz and get more listeners to download the app.

Can Clubhouse still become a mainstay in the social media space, and a real challenger to the established players?

Maybe not in the sense that it may have seemed to some a few months back, but I see Clubhouse’s potential as more akin to Reddit, with dedicated, passionate, engaged communities connecting in the rooms, providing an alternate, more exclusive space for chats than the bigger social apps.

If Clubhouse can establish partnerships with relevant groups, and build on its potential as a more specialized, more focused community space, that seems like a more viable path, which won’t see the app reach billions of users, but will see it lay more solid foundations for ongoing usage.

Socialmediatoday.com

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X Adds Option To Embed Videos in Isolation From Posts

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X Adds Option To Embed Videos in Isolation From Posts

Next time you go to embed an X post, you may notice a new step:

Now, X will enable you to choose whether you want to embed the video element in isolation, or the whole post, as normal.

And if you do choose to embed just the video (or GIF), it’ll look like this:

Which could be a helpful way to present X-originated video on third-party websites, and add context to, say, your blog post, without the clutter of the full X framing.

But it could also reduce brand exposure for X, which is likely why Twitter didn’t enable this before, though it did once provide an “embedded video widget” which essentially served the same purpose.

X embeds

Twitter gradually seemed to phase that out as the platform evolved, and there’s no specific reason that I can find as to why it removed it as an option. But either way, now, it’s back, so you have more options for using X-originated content, and putting more focus on video elements specifically.

Though I don’t know why they didn’t also take the opportunity to remove the ‘Tweet’ reference. Since the re-brand to X, the platform seems to have gone to little effort to weed out all the tweet and bird terminology, but then again, with 80% fewer staff, that’s probably understandable as well.



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TikTok stars are using Fanova to generate income from social media

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TikTok stars are using Fanova to generate income from social media

Image courtesy of Fanova

Opinions expressed by Digital Journal contributors are their own.

In recent years, Latin American influencers and content creators have witnessed a remarkable surge in popularity. Despite boasting substantial and highly engaged fan bases, these influencers often find themselves in the shadows, overlooked for lucrative brand deals and partnerships. This oversight is especially pronounced, given their substantial influence over a diverse, global audience.

The moment is ripe for these creators to carve out a dedicated space where they can effectively monetize their exceptional talents. Such a platform would empower Latin American influencers and create fresh opportunities for profound collaborations and enhanced engagement with audiences worldwide.

This is where Fanova comes into play, revolutionizing the Latin American creator economy. In an environment where the creator market is still in its nascent stage, and many talented individuals remain underserved, Fanova is pioneering a new era for creators to make real money doing what they love.

Latin America’s creative minds have often found their potential hindered by a lack of opportunities. Fanova is here to break the barriers and provide a platform that allows them to monetize their content and recognize the value of their unique talents. The creator economy in the region is brimming with untapped potential, and Fanova seeks to unleash it. Creators with massive, loyal followings often find themselves unable to monetize their social media presence effectively or are overlooked by brand deals. Fanova aims to change that narrative.

With Fanova, creators have the freedom to set their monthly subscription prices, giving them the ability to provide exclusive content to their most devoted fans while ensuring a steady, reliable income month after month. Additionally, they have the flexibility to establish their own pricing for direct messages, creating a direct avenue for intimate one-on-one interactions with their followers.

By using Fanova, creators can deepen their connection with their audience by sharing a wide range of captivating content, such as behind-the-scenes glimpses, travel adventures, workout routines, insightful blogs, engaging podcasts, exclusive photos, and much more. It’s a dynamic platform that enables creators to monetize their craft and foster a stronger, more personal bond with their fan base.

Fanova is attracting top talent in the Latin American creator economy. Melissa Andress recently joined the platform. Renowned as @melissaandress on Instagram and @melipandaa on TikTok, Melissa boasts a significant and dedicated following of 1.6M and 13.7M followers, respectively. She uses Fanova to share daily behind-the-scenes of her life with her followers, treating it like a private story.

“I was immediately interested in the general concept of this platform: having a place to document behind-the-scenes content and not relying solely on brand deals seemed great to me,” Melissa explained.

Her impressive online presence has contributed to Fanova’s success in a significant way. Her engagement and credibility have introduced countless new creators and users to the platform.

Fanova is already leaving its mark in the Latin American creator economy, having attracted 150 creators. Even more impressive, Fanova has paid out over $100,000 to these creators. This is not just a promise; it’s a proven reality.

Fanova is a clean subscription platform, so nudity and explicit content is not permitted. The platform employs a team of moderators as well as artificial intelligence to monitor content.

For creators in Latin America, Fanova represents a new beginning. It’s an opportunity to be part of a transformative journey where your passion can be your paycheck. It’s a place where talent meets technology, and creators are valued. The new application is leading the charge to monetize content in Latin America, one passion at a time. For more information, visit www.fanova.io.



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Merriam-Webster’s 2023 Word of the Year

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Merriam-Webster's 2023 Word of the Year

The wordsmiths over at Merriam-Webster have announced their official “Word of the Year for 2023,” they say it’s something we are “thinking about, writing about, aspiring to, and judging more” than ever.

The word is authentic.

According to the dictionary, the most common definitions of authentic are “not false or imitation,” “being true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character,” and “worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact.”

Merriam-Webster says the word saw a “substantial increase” in lookups this year. That’s probably because we now live in a world where artificial intelligence, deepfake technology and questionable memes challenge our basic notions of reality.


Authenticity is also seen as a commodity at a time when influencers build their brands on social media while attempting to seamlessly pitch their “favorite” products. These days, the average person scrolls through over 43 feet of content every day on social media. After being exposed to countless images of people, it becomes easier to spot the phonies from those who are being their authentic selves.

“When we look at common threads across the thousands of influencer marketing campaigns we’ve run at The Outloud Group over the last 15 years, the similarity between all of our best-performing brand creator partnerships is pretty simple: true authenticity,” Bradley Hoos, CEO of The Outland Group, a full-service influencer marketing agency, writes in Forbes.

Merriam-Webster adds that authenticity is a trait people strove to find for themselves in 2023.

“Celebrities like singers Lainey Wilson, Sam Smith, and especially Taylor Swift all made headlines in 2023 with statements about seeking their ‘authentic voice’ and ‘authentic self,” Merriam-Webster writes. “Headlines like Three Ways To Tap Into Taylor Swift’s Authenticity And Build An Eras-Like Workplace associate this quality with pop-culture superpower.”

The dictionary also highlighted more words that trended in 2023, including:

“Rizz” — Internet slang for “romantic appeal or charm” (noun) or “to charm, seduce” (verb), popularized by YouTuber Kai Cenat, was added to the dictionary.

“Deepfake” — Altered images or recordings that convincingly misrepresent someone’s actions or words, making it hard to distinguish between real and fake.

“Coronation” — The crowning of a new British monarch, King Charles III, sent people to the dictionary’s website to learn the term’s meaning.

“Dystopian” — In 2023, “dystopian” was a verb applied to many frightening real-world issues and was used to describe the trend in video games, books and movies depicting a dark future.

“EGOT” — Lookups for “EGOT” spiked in February when Viola Davis won a Grammy for the audiobook version of her memoir. That made her one of the 18 people to become an EGOT, or winner of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards.

“X” — When Twitter was rebranded as X on July 23, searches for the term spiked at Merriam-Webster.com, where curious people went to discover more about the mysterious letter.

“Implode” — When a submersible that went to visit the remains of the Titanic in June imploded, the term had a considerable spike as people attempted to learn more about the passengers’ fate.

“Doppelgänger” — This term got hot multiple times in 2023. It trended twice due to stories out of Germany and New York involving the attempted murder or suicide of someone’s lookalike. Further, September saw the release of Naomi Klein’s book, “Doppelgänger: A Trip Into the Mirror World.”



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