Nigeria’s Mopewa Ogundipe to develop Clubhouse Android App as Creators Start Getting Paid

Audio chat platform, Clubhouse has hired Nigerian Software Engineer, Mopewa Ogundipe to lead its Android app development.

Mopewa joins Clubhouse after working in software engineering roles at online publishing platform, Medium. She spent over three years at the company, where she worked on the medium android app and backend systems to support it.

Prior to this, the android developer had a one-year stint as Software Engineer at Khan Academy, United States.

Mopewa holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania.

After closing a reported $100 million Series B round in January, Clubhouse had disclosed that plans to develop an Android app were underway. The invite-only voice chat platform’s iOS version has been live since April 2020.

As part of efforts to attract and retain users, Clubhouse has now introduced a monetisation feature which will let users get paid directly on the platform.

Clubhouse Creators to now Receive Payments

Clubhouse is pioneering creator payments in the audio chat space with its payments feature. The new feature will first be enabled for a small group of creators before rolling it out to other users.

The latest integration will facilitate direct payments between users and creators. Users will be able to send money to creators (who have the feature enabled) via credit or debit card.

Video-sharing platforms such as YouTube operate a different payment model whereby creators earn a share of video ads revenue when they reach a balance of $100. Tiktok, on the other hand, pays creators a specified amount per 1,000 views.

While the criterion for creators who qualify for payments is not clearly defined, people who regularly host amazing conversations and are building their audience should expectedly be at the forefront.

Unlike YouTube, Clubhouse creators will receive 100% of the payment. However, the person sending the money will be charged a small card processing fee credited to its payments partner, Stripe.

Although Clubhouse is not taking any percentage on creator earnings for now, this could be reviewed going forward. The company has probably started out by charging zero commissions so as to incentivise creators to consistently put out premium content on its live audio chat service.

The payments integration for creators and imminent launch of the Clubhouse android app are perhaps aimed at giving the platform a competitive edge over rivals such as Twitter Spaces.