Clubhouse announced the addition of 3 Nigerian languages, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba to the audio platform. According to information received from the company, the language localisation support is aimed at making the platform more accessible to Nigerians who don’t speak English or who simply prefer local-language alternatives.
Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba are the three numerically – and politically – major ethnic groups in Nigeria. The 3 languages are part of the second rollout of 13 new languages supported and they are: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional (Taiwan), Farsi / Persian, Hausa, Igbo, Marathi, Nepali, Somali, Thai, Turkish and Yoruba. The new languages supported will be available on Android with iOS support coming soon.
Language localisation means that the app experience, such as prompts, notifications, descriptions, topics, and more, will be in Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba when the languages are selected. For example, When someone joins the app, the onboarding language will now be in their local language. If someone wants to start a room, they will see “+Room” prompt and selections all in their local language. This means that people who join clubs like Yoruba Palava, IGBO, Naija House, etc, will not only have discussions about culture and history in their local languages but experience Clubhouse in them too.
The support of Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and 10 other languages follows a global trend as the language localisation feature is one of the most requested features on the app outside of the United States. Clubhouse initially rolled out support French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Malayalam, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, Tamil and Telugu. Overall, the app has support for 26 languages on Android with more on the way.
Topics
Secondly, Clubhouse is updating the feature formerly known as Interests – now called Topics, with a broader, better taxonomy that will make it easier to discover rooms, clubs and people with shared passions or relevant expertise. Currently, users can only select Topics they’re interested in during onboarding and the app will suggest rooms and people users might want to listen to when they join Clubhouse. The updated feature has the option that will allow users to display topics they follow on their profiles so people can get a better sense of who they are. The update is rolling out starting today to both iOS and Android devices. Shortly, the feature may be tested in the hallway allowing users to create topics of their own.
Launched in 2020 by founders, Paul Davison and Rohan Seth as an invitation-only audio-chat social networking app, Clubhouse now has over 700,000 rooms taking place daily on the platform with users spending an average of 70 minutes in rooms at a time.
It has rapidly been rolling out new features over the last couple of months. In September, it rolled out two features that enables Record and Replay of Conversations and the ‘Wave’ Feature which lets users invite friends for private chats.
