Elon Musk wants to host a Clubhouse session with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
The chief executive officer of Tesla and SpaceX requested through a tweet addressed at the Kremlin’s official Twitter account. He followed with another one in the Russian language that says “it would be a great honor to speak with you” (machine translated). Musk does not give any context to the tweet like why he wants to talk or what he would talk about.
Musk’s tweet can be seen as an endorsement to Clubhouse, an application that has gone viral of late. The invite-only app allows users to set up virtual discussion groups. As the app has grown in popularity, it has caught the attention of tech bigwigs such as Musk and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Other celebrities like Drake, Kevin Hart, Oprah, Jared Leto, and Ashton Kutcher are also regular on Clubhouse.
According to Sensor Tower, a data analytics firm, Clubhouse had nearly 3.6 million users globally as of February 2. The firm revealed that the last 1.1 million users joined in the prior six days. Clubhouse is currently available only on Apple’s iOS platform.
Clubhouse rivals
Even as Clubhouse is going viral, internet firms are already working on their own versions. According to a Bloomberg report, Facebook is exploring audio-chat service to compete with Clubhouse. Facebook is likely to evolve Messenger Rooms into a Clubhouse rival.
Messenger Rooms is essentially a video chat feature that was introduced last year. Rooms aimed to take on Zoom, a video conferencing platform that shot to fame last year. The report adds that Facebook may convert Rooms calls into an audio-based broadcast platform with support for more than the current 50-person limit. The company is still working on different ideas.
Apart from Facebook, Twitter is expanding Spaces to more markets. Spaces was recently made available to a select group of users in India.
“We have given a small group of diverse voices, including people in India, access to Spaces to test the feature. By seeking feedback from a variety of communities early on, we can make the product better for everyone. The experiment will expand over time,” a Twitter spokesperson told HT Tech.
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