Now everyone can join Clubhouse, the audio app that became popular in the pandemic

(CNN Business) – In the early months of the pandemic, people were clamoring for an invitation to the Clubhouse audio app to hear reflections from a group of venture capitalists, tech leaders and celebrities. Now, Clubhouse opens up to everyone at a time when the app’s permanence is in question.
Clubhouse, in which members join virtual rooms for real-time, unscripted conversations, said Wednesday that it will no longer be a guest-only app or a waiting list to join. All iOS and Android users in the United States and abroad can register now.

The platform was launched in March 2020, when the pandemic was hitting the United States and many were trapped at home. It quickly became the most talked about in Silicon Valley and caught the attention of the largest social networks. In January 2021, Clubhouse was supposedly valued in a billion dollars.

Clubhouse founders Paul Davison and Rohan Seth said in a January blog post they planned to “scale … as fast as we can and open it up to everyone soon”. A version of the Android app, released in May, has surpassed 10 million downloads, the company said Wednesday.

“The invitation system has been an important part of our early history,” Davison and Seth wrote in a blog post Wednesday. They also said that the addition of people in waves has helped “grow the Clubhouse in a measured way.”

But the decision to open the platform comes when the app not only has to compete with the return of face-to-face meetings in the US and other markets, it must also compete with newly launched products from more established social media platforms. Twitter started experimenting with “Spaces” in December and Facebook launched Live Audio Rooms At the end of june.

According to data from Sensor Tower, which tracks mobile apps, Clubhouse has seen a significant decline in monthly iOS downloads in recent months, from its peak of 9.6 million downloads in February to just 719,000 in May. In total, the app has reached approximately 29.8 million installs worldwide on the App Store and Google Play, according to Sensor Tower.

But Clubhouse suggested that interaction with the platform remains strong.

Clubhouse said that around 500,000 rooms are created on the platform daily, with the average user spending about an hour a day on the app. Last week, he announced an option to send direct messages to people on the Clubhouse app, called “Backchannel”. Some 90 million messages have been sent, according to the company. (Before, people had to find each other off the platform to engage in a text-based conversation.)

In its short life, the Clubhouse has already faced a number of questions about whether it is equipped to handle restraint of harmful speech and abuse on its platform, with some members and critics publicly sharing examples of antisemitism, disinformation and harassment. Although the company has added some security features, there have also been doubts about the measures that they pretend to help.

“We know there will be many more ups and downs as we scale, and the competition from the big networks will be fierce. But we believe the future is created by optimists, and we are excited to continue working to build a different kind of social network,” wrote Davison and Seth.