Clubhouse is an invitation-only social media app for iOS and Android where users can communicate in voice chat rooms that accommodate groups of up to 5,000 people. The audio-only app hosts live discussions, with opportunities to participate through speaking and listening. Audio-only social media platform, Clubhouse, has finally come to Android.
The app will be available only to users in the US right now, but the company said it would be coming to other “English speaking countries” and the rest of the world in future. The company plans to collect feedback from the community, fix any issues we see and work to add a few final features such as payments and club creation, before rolling it out more broadly. Clubhouse is also gearing up for competition from the world’s largest social network, Facebook, which unveiled a host of audio features it will be adding over the rest of the year. The app will continue with its invite only model, meaning users can only join the platform on Android if they are invited by someone who is already on Clubhouse. Clubhouse’s popularity has grown exponentially over the past year, thanks to a general growth in audio and video chat platforms. The company raised a series C funding round in April, which raised its valuation to $4 billion. Clubhouse plans to begin opening up even further, welcoming millions more from the iOS waitlist, expanding language support, and adding more accessibility features, so that people worldwide can experience Clubhouse in a way that feels native to them.
The viral platform’s Android version has been expected for over a year now, especially since Twitter brought competing platform Spaces to Android in March. As Clubhouse struggles to maintain its growth data from mobile insight firms including AppMagic suggest that Clubhouse installs have drastically dropped in recent months the Android app could prove pivotal in boosting the startup’s reach across the globe. Although, Clubhouse’s beta Android app currently lacks a number of features such as the ability to follow a topic, in-app translations, localization, ability to create or manage a club, link Twitter and Instagram profiles, payments, as well as the ability to change the profile name or user name. Earlier this month, Clubhouse announced a partnership with US-based payments processor Stripe to let users send money to creators on the platform. Moreover, Clubhouse will have to fend off a growing tide of competition from established players like Twitter, LinkedIn, Spotify, and soon, Facebook.
