Done! It took a while, but I’m in. In the new hot shit called the Clubhouse. And so, dear friends who appear in my contacts, the provider also has all of your numbers. Clubhouse is not only an extremely hyped live podcast app, Clubhouse also wants to know as much as possible!

But let’s start at the beginning. Suddenly a new social network appears and everyone wants to get in. In the USA it was already the case last summer, in Germany the app is only now available and you can listen to all sorts of people talking away – including celebrities like Thomas Gottschalk. But not everyone can do that. Getting in is not that easy, because up to now you can only participate by invitation and only if you have an iPhone. Anyone who has made it can then get two contacts, but only if they allow the app to access the phone book. Artificial scarcity is the name of this approach, which is popular with advertisers. You also vouch for the invitees.

The app should be very be strict with real names and profile pictures. If you wonder how they want to control that – well, Clubhouse not only wants access to the contacts, but also to Twitter and other social networks, interests, calendars and of course the microphone. Of course, the app picks up everything else that is possible: location, device, etc. The privacy policy states: “We collect content, communication and other information that you give us, including when you registered and when you created content and shared as well as with whom and what you communicated. ” The servers are in the USA. A lot is questionable in terms of data protection law.

Eva-Maria White studied communication science with a focus on media psychology at the University of Vienna and has been working as a journalist ever since.

Data against being there Generous, but how we are all with our data , Clubhouse offers us the opportunity to listen to live podcasts or to start them ourselves. Of course you can follow your contacts and be informed as soon as they speak somewhere. Either you join such a podcast or you use the suggestions that Clubhouse makes on the basis of the specified interests. Everyone sees who is listening. “Nice” is currently that almost everyone is marked as newbies with a party horn in their profile picture. If you want to talk, you can raise your hand. All conversations are recorded, of course for security reasons. Clubhouse justifies this with the fact that they are podcasts.

Venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz, who worked for AirBnB, among others, Facebook, Twitter and GitHub invested US $ 12 million in Clubhouse last May. The start-up was valued at 100 million US dollars – when it was only 1500 users. Should have been worth it by now. The data already collected alone should be worth the money.

Is it worth it? But it can be even nicer for the provider and the clubhouse sits down really in the long run. Is that likely? In any case, the hype in the USA has flattened a little. If you find exciting conversations, people you follow elsewhere, there is now the option of listening to them instead of reading them. That can be exciting for some mission-conscious people. The entry barriers to setting up your own podcast are, apart from the invitation, low.

In addition to data protection, the lack of time on the part of the listener could be a further obstacle. Podcasts are more difficult to consume on the side than Facebook feeds. Apart from that: there is actually no shortage of offers for podcasts.

(emw)