Clubhouse, The Invite-Only Social Media App You Maybe Never Heard Of, Expands to Include Android Users
Have you received your invitation to Clubhouse yet? If your phone is an Android, that answer has necessarily been no for the past year, but that’s about to change.
After more than a year being the exclusive province of iOS users, social audio platform Clubhouse just released its Android app. As of Sunday, a beta version will be available on Google’s mobile OS in the US, allowing users to sign up and participate in its audio-only chat rooms.
“Our plan over the next few weeks is to collect feedback from the community, fix any issues we see and work to add a few final features like payments and club creation before rolling it out more broadly,” the company said in a blog post.
On iPhones, the app spiked in popularity early this year after eccentric celebrity billionaire (and newly-minted SNL host) Elon Musk and others appeared in audio chats. The app allows participants to follow like-minded business and creative types, including many celebrities, as they host, moderate or otherwise participate in audio chats on a variety of subjects.
The Android app has been the top request from its community by far, according to the developers. It will roll out to other English-speaking markets and the rest of the world starting in a few days or weeks. Users outside the US will be able to pre-register for access via the Clubhouse page in the Google Play store, and will be notified when the Android app is available in their area.
That doesn’t mean that all Android users can sign up immediately, though. Clubhouse says the platform will remain invite-only for now, “as part of the effort to keep the growth measured,” the company said in a statement. This summer, the company plans to begin importing the millions of iOS users who have been languishing on a waitlist while the company built the app’s infrastructure.
Even with limited access, Clubhouse has created a lot of buzz, partly because of its early popularity with the venture-capital crowd in and around Silicon Valley. The company was recently valued at $4 billion after a new funding round.
Buzz doesn’t always mean a large user base, however, and downloads of the app have been on the decline in recent months, according to the analytics firm Sensor Tower. It’s speculated that Clubhouse believes welcoming Android users will save it from spiraling further. The app notched over 9.5 million downloads in February but by March dipped to about 2.7 million and took a sharp drop to just 900,000 in April. Android is the most popular OS worldwide.
That fall-off raised questions about the long term viability of Clubhouse and whether its initial success was due in part to the greater number of people at home during the pandemic.
The play for Android users may also be in response to other social media giants like Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, Reddit, Discord, LinkedIn offering similar experiences on their platforms. Twitter’s clone of Clubhouse, called Spaces, has emerged as one of the biggest competitors to the startup.
In addition to the technical upgrades, Clubhouse has turned its attention to attracting creators to its platform, and recently announced the results of a program which will allow it to fund 50 audio shows on the platform. Now, with its release on Android, Clubhouse is on the verge of more than doubling its reach and impact.