Will Clubhouse Be a Success or Has-Been

Clubhouse has taken the social-media, podcast, networking-platform world by storm with its drop-in audio chat app. With a multi-billion dollar valuation and audiences flocking to the platform, Nir Eyal, behavior design and customer psychology expert and Santa Cruz Works’ presenter takes a closer look at the habit-forming mechanism characteristic of successful social-media platforms.

Article from Nir Eyal

Maybe you’ve heard the buzz around Clubhouse, the drop-in audio chat app. It’s a bit like Twitch for conference calls. If you have no idea what “Twitch” is, you’re probably over 40. In your case, the closest analog might be those 1–900 party lines you saw advertised on late-night TV in the 1990s—but a bit less sleazy and in app form.

The Clubhouse app is the new new thing, and it’s got many people hooked. The app is the latest example of a habit-forming product taking the world by storm.

In 2014, I published my book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. My mission was to help people in all industries understand and apply the psychology of behavioral design to build the kinds of products that promote good habits in their users’ lives (think fitness and learning apps).

I wanted to share and democratize the techniques used by the world’s stickiest products, like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, so that anyone could build habit-forming products for good, rather than frivolity.