Let's Dive in ...

Probably the most frequently used word for me last week is no longer "Clubhouse" but "Dive".

Quite frankly, Dive is not a new app. History reviews that Dive was developed and launched in February 2020, a month earlier than Clubhouse. But why not many people were aware of the existence of this app (and I am talking about people in my circle).

Here are a few reasons from my research:

1. This App is created by a team of Germans in Europe, unlike Clubhouse which was created by the Americans. If you have been following the Clubhouse in the last 6 months, you would probably recall the reason why Clubhouse became the "TOTT" (or the Talk of the Town) was due to the influx of a bunch of big shot internet marketers and influencers and suddenly, everyone in my circle mentioned "Clubhouse". This is not the case of Dive - no branding by association or influencer like the case of Clubhouse.
2. Although the biggest complaint about Clubhouse by the folks on LinkedIn is that Clubhouse is only open to iOS device users (and many said that they refused to change from Android to iPhone as it was deemed unnecessary), I am not sure whether Dive leveraged this complaint about Clubhouse and pushed hard to folks. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that Dive did not do the work. My experience is that there are still a lot of folks who do not know the existence of "Dive". This proves a point in marketing and branding:

"It's not about you know who, but who knows you."

While Linkedin is proud of having over 720 million users and 76% of these users are outside the US, how many of these users are active on LinkedIn? Based on the Omnicore Group's research in 2020, there were 310 million active users on LinkedIn every month. This looks great comparing with 4 billion users monthly for Facebook and Instagram combined. However, there is also intense competition right now among the social audio chat apps. Just on my iPhone, I have Clubhouse, Dive and Telegram Voice Chat. If I were from the US, I would also have Twitter Space (which is not open to people like us in Singapore yet). So, one important task for Dive's team to work on I believe is to share what this app is about and why is it different from competitors.

I am glad to be informed by the core team via their weekly Roundtable last night that they are working on guiding this topic.

This happens in the world of leadership too - to attract more followers to join you, the leader has to do whatever it takes to share his/her vision before being able to get the buy-in from his/her followers.

Can you relate to the above?

Latest Update on the App on AppStore (Version 2.8)

Dmytro Boguslavskyy, the Co-Founder of Dive, mentioned that there is an update on the App, and I have the benefit of downloading the latest version on AppStore (Version 2.8).

Creating a Room is Easy and Let's Me Make a Few Comments ...

If you have experience in scheduling events at Clubhouse, this process should be something you are familiar with.

What I like about Dive in this case are:

1. The length of the title allowed is more than what Clubhouse would. +1
2. The description of the event is 240 characters whereas Clubhouse only allows 200 characters. +1
3. The host can select a maximum of 2 topics so that other users can tell if they are interested in joining the room to participate. One of the major complaints about Clubhouse is that what is being preached on the event title and description may not be truly reflective of what's happening in the room. Paul Davison has explained many times in the weekly Townhall announcement that Clubhouse team is working hard on the algorithm to achieve results. I would not award a +1 in this case because it is not a fair comparison at this juncture when there is a smaller amount of users on Dive as compared to Clubhouse. However, I like this function on Dive.
4. Language selection - if you are a Clubhouse user, have you experienced before when you joined a room where the participants were speaking a foreign language. I am aware because I run rooms in both English and Cantonese. I got folks who speak Spanish ping me to join their room every single day (but we are very good friends from the same community - so no hard feeling at all). So, I like what Dive offers here - language selection. If I know that the conversation of the room is in German or French, I would not want to join as I don't speak these languages. That's a quick filter. I guess that is the fundamental difference between American developers and European developers. On this point, it's a +1 for me.
5. One cool thing I also notice is this button "Apply to Speak" which I cannot find in Clubhouse. For example, I see an interesting topic in my town hall and I would like to participate. What I would have done in Clubhouse is to join the room as a listener first, and press the "hand raise" button to get to speak. If you are an existing Clubhouse user, you should be familiar with this process. In Dive, it is the same. I can click the "hand-raise" button after I join a room and if accepted, I can be elevated as a speaker.

However, what's so cool about Dive from a planning perspective is that the host can decide in advance whether he allows others to join the room as a speaker.

Maybe the person who wants to speak may not have the relevant expertise. Maybe this person is not the right fit.

What's happening is that the host can have a pre-qualifying process of the person who wants to speak in advance. Keep in mind that the topics discussed in Dive are meant to be "professional topics".

This is a cool feature but how effective it can be, is something that remains to be seen. So, to be fair, I would not award a +1 here as it is too early.

You are now all set ... the Event is Confirmed ... What's Next?

Similar to Clubhouse, of course, you have to promote your event, isn't it?

What I like about Clubhouse is that getting the event link is very easy because it needs only one click.

But the problem is that I still have to share the link on my Facebook, Twitter and even Instagram. And this is another step.

Now, on Dive, as it connects with LinkedIn (not Facebook, Twitter or Instagram), you can see a button at the bottom centre, and it is the latest feature on this Version 2.8 as I was told.

You can now click "Instant Post" and your event will be posted directly on your LinkedIn account with just one click.

Does this look easy? How I wish Clubhouse has this feature but the problem with Instagram is that it requires an image with a post. So it may not work well. Clubhouse is not specifically linked with Facebook and thus, I don't expect to see this feature being added to Clubhouse.

In any case, this is how the post looks like on my LinkedIn feed.

Version 1 is better than Version 0. What can be improved on Version 2?

The first thing is the time and date. For example, I have scheduled an event on April 18 at 2100 Singapore time.

The post here said "Tomorrow at 1500 CET". From a global audience perspective, due to the timezone difference, I would still prefer to be very specific when it comes to date and time.

As a result, I have to manually revise the post to indicate "Tomorrow (18 April 2021) at 15:00 CET | 21:00 Singapore time | 06:00 PST | 09:00 EST"

I am looking forward to further improvement on this feature.

See you in my next article! Let's Dive in and Connect, and Be a Better Version of Ourselves!

Jack HM Wong (Founder - Dragons Den Tigers Cave)

PS: Follow me in Clubhouse or join my Club "Dragons Den Tigers Cave" which we meet every Saturday at 9 pm GMT+8

PS: Follow me in Dive if you are an existing Diver