What happened to the Clubhouse?

Are you familiar with Clubhouse? Do your friends’ eyes light up when they hear the word - Clubhouse? Is it the newest antidepressant on the market? Nah it is far from it, it's the app that once created so much FOMO.

Blogs were the first mediums for people to express their thoughts and ideas on the internet. However, they had too much content and low engagement, so we began writing on Twitter (140 characters maximum) to increase engagement and get feedback from people.  Then came YouTube with far more users than creators. Then, TikTok was introduced to attract more video creators and make the platform more accessible. Now, we have podcasts in the audio segment, which are clunky, long, difficult to produce, and extremely difficult to find.

So Clubhouse came with Live-audio chat, with no production costs and allowing you to easily transition into the creator space.

Clubhouse has its own set of security features, such as the ability to create a chat room with a friend, make it public, and silence all listeners. Members can now raise their hands and speak, transforming themselves from consumers to creators. It is much easier to create content here because it is a free-flowing conversation rather than a podcast. There is no shortage of topics, from a confession room to a room full of entrepreneurs saving the world, you can switch in seconds, demonstrating how seamless the app is, catering to all types of audiences and their needs. 

Other similar launches include Spotify Greenroom, which focuses on the NBA, Discord Stages, which is primarily used by gamers, Sharechat, which focuses on indigenous language groups, and finally Twitter Spaces, which is extremely difficult to find. In terms of variety of content and experience, Clubhouse outperformed its competitors.

Clubhouse began as an invite-only, iOS-only app. They went ahead and invited the most famous Silicon Valley figures to be on the app, including Ben Horowitz, Marc Andreessen, and MC Hammer. The app continued to invite famous people because, apparently, all influential people are iPhone users except Bill Gates, who prefers Android and was left off the list for this party.

Beginning in April 2020, the app initially hosted only 1500 users before reaching a valuation of more than $100 million by May 2020. You could get on it by getting an invite from a friend (users get a limited number of invites to share), or you could go to eBay and buy one for $125.

But how did we get to this point of hype?

So, one fine Sunday evening, Elon Musk decided to drop in and have a chat, causing a black market frenzy for Clubhouse passes. Yes, the ones that sell for $125.

Clubhouse was valued at over $1 billion dollars nine months after its launch and was last valued at $4 billion dollars. But, what happened to the app? Off the market, losing favour. 

According to the data, app downloads have begun to decline dramatically. The social media app had 10.6 million downloads in February 2021, 2.9 million in March, and 873k in April 2021, all of which have steadily declined since.

During the pandemic, the app experienced rapid growth and became the talk of the town, but as the saying goes, slow and steady wins the race. Despite the fact that Clubhouse is now available on Android and does not require invites, the number of people who regularly use the app is quite low and is not expected to grow anytime soon.