At the start of the pandemic, people were asking for membership invite to join a new social media app then known as Clubhouse as it was the hottest thing in town.
Then what is Clubhouse?
Clubhouse app is an audio-only app where one can hear and listen to the musings of a who’s who of venture capitalists, tech leaders and even celebrities. The latest update is that Clubhouse is finally opening its doors of membership to everyone, comingin a time when there are questions arising about how long the social media app can enjoy its popularity.
Good news now is that intending users of the app will no longer be by ‘invite-only’ or operate a waitlist to join the social media app. Intending members who are all iOS and android users in the US and even outside the US can sign up and join it’s virtual rooms to have live and there’s room also for free discussions without fear.
Clubhouse launched in March 2020 at a period the United States was hit by the Covid 19 pandemic leaving many of its citizens compulsorily indoor, with talks and discussions about it very popular in Silicon Valley, and in the process, drawing the attention of major social networks. By the beginning of 2021, the clubhouse social media app was reported to have an estimated value of $1 billion.
The reality of this new found fame dawned on founders of Clubhouse :Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, as both reportedly said in a blog post in early January that they had in their plans to “scale up as soon as possible, opening it to everyone.
Fast forward to May 2021, Clubhouse app came out with an Android version. And voila! Its venture into the market reportedly exceeded 10 million downloads, the company’smanagement team confirmed this on Wednesday.
According to the Social media app, every single day, 500,000 rooms are created on the platform, thereby having an average user spending around an hour per day with the app. Last week “Backchannel’ was introduced as an option to send messages to people on the App. The new development made room for around 90 million sent messages as against the earlier practice of people having to find each other outside of the platform to have a text-based conversation.
Clubhouse founders, Davison and Seth wrote in a blog post Wednesday.
“The invite system has been an important part of our early history,” They futher added that admission of intending users in waves has helped enhance growth in Clubhouse app in a measured way.
The decision of the Social media app to admit ‘all’ into the app but only because of various competitors of IRL gatherings in the United States or other markets but also it was made in a bid to compete with newly launched products from more established social media platforms. For example, another social media giant, Twitter started experimenting with “Spaces” in December and also, Facebook launched Live Audio Rooms in late June.
Sensor Tower has data which tracks mobile apps affirmed that Clubhouse has significantly decreased in monthly iOS downloads in recent months from its peak of 9.6 million downloads in February to just 719,000 in May.
Clubhouse has climaxed to approximately 29.8 million installs globally across the App Store and Google Play, with Clubhouse insisting they remain a strong platform to contest with.
Davison and Seth wrote further wrote;
“We know there will be many more ups and downs as we scale, and competition from the large networks will be fierce. But we believe the future is created by optimists — and we’re excited to keep working to build a different kind of social network.”
