Clubhouse trying to regain momentum
Social audio chat app Clubhouse has been the media darling for the last year year but something is happening. Downloads of the app are falling. The on-invitation-only app is now trying to increase the market by adding an Android version. The app has until now been available only for Apple’s iOS.
In February Clubhouse had more than nine million monthly downloads.
In March this was down to 2.8 million. Of course, the market could be more satisfied but the falling number has led to discussions about if competition from copy cats like Twitter and Facebook is hurting.
The company said it has started testing its Android version in the US and that it shortly would launch the Android also in the UK and other English speaking countries.
“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.
The Android version will be rolled out in the rest of the world in a few weeks. The company said users outside the US can register to be alerted when it is available in their country.
North and Latin America used to account for the largest share of downloads worldwide in previous months but as of February, the Europe, Middle East and Africa took over and held the largest share of global downloads. As of March, the app had roughly 2.8 million downloads. Clubhouse was launched in April a year ago and had more than two million weekly active users in January 2021.
In April, Clubhouse had 922,000 downloads, down from 9.6 million in from February.
Funding activities indicate the company is valued at around USD 4 billion.
The audio only, no recordings, became a real boom when Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk and Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined chat rooms on Clubhouse. Facebook has since announced its own audio services including chat rooms that sound very much like a copy of Clubhouse.
GROWTH TAPERING
Clubhouse 922,000 downloads globally in April means a 66% dip from 2.7 million installs in March and a surge of 9.6 million in February, Insider.com reported being first to observe the decline.
A Sensor Tower spokesperson told Insider, April’s user growth appears to have tapered off in recent months but said data suggests retention is strong among users.
The platform was launched as on invitation-only, and still, is but CEO Paul Davison has said the idea is to open up the app for everyone.
PAYMENT SYSTEM
The company recently announced cooperation with payment system Stripe to allow users to pay chat hosts etc opening up for creators to monetize Clubhouse participation. Facebook and Twitter, who both have launched similar services, have said they will also open up for developers and hosts to get paid for their contributions to the chats.
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