It's a very basic version of IRC but for audio, and only for invitees for now.

And it's great for all the reasons IRC is great, but everyone thinks it's all a totally new concept so they're just waiting for it to get its unicorn horn and start pissing cash money.

Really curious to know. Is it because of the conversational tone or the click-baity suspense?

The article is almost half done before it begins to explain the basic mechanics of the service, and I still didn't really get it until I read elsewhere. If it was easy for anyone to sign up and/or it had been around for a while, that might be OK, but given that it's not, a sentence or two to tell the reader WTF you're writing about would be helpful.

TechCrunch explains it succinctly in the second paragraph: "The most buzzy of these startups is Clubhouse, an audio-based social network where people can spontaneously jump into voice chat rooms together. You see the unlabeled rooms of all the people you follow, and you can join to talk or just listen along, milling around to find what interests you."

Hey! I wrote this article. There is literally a description of the basic mechanics of the app starting at word 48 of the piece. I have no clue how you missed this!

> "After we exchanged pleasantries, Paul explained how the app works. There’s one global “room,” and when you join you start off on mute, but anyone can unmute themselves. When you open the app, it sends push notifications to everyone on the app, so they can join you and chat if they’re free."

I'm curious why this didn't work for you and what you would have wanted instead?

You're not the only one who the writing drove crazy!