Clubhouse's Easy-to-Replicate Format Might Be Here to Stay

At first, Walter Geer, like many, didn’t understand Clubhouse. It was early July 2020, and Geer, now the executive creative director at agency VMLY&R, spent a few days listening to live audio conversations on the app before shelving it for a few weeks. While Clubhouse is now known for its LinkedIn-esque user base, the breakthrough session for Geer wasn’t really about business or marketing. “The first conversation I spoke in on was actually about dog food,” he said. The conversation was interesting, but the intimacy is what did it for him. Geer estimates there might have been 1,500 people on the app at the time, and average rooms involved five people. “Conversations were super candid, and you could really establish incredible relationships. It felt very, very exclusive.” In the months after, Geer saw exponential growth in the platform's user base, fueled in large part by a robust and engaged Black community. By December, the “floodgates” opened, he said. The winter brought the apex of Clubhouse’s audience numbers, but it also brought over-eager motivational speakers, self-proclaimed billionaires, wannabe influencers and even scammers. Plus, the app has long struggled with server capabilities, content moderation, accessibility and monetization opportunities—must-haves for any modern platform. Now, the app is at a crossroads. Clubhouse is trying to mature quickly while keeping the elements that made it special in its early days. Despite intense hype in Silicon Valley and a $4 billion valuation, Clubhouse is staring down declining user growth numbers, intense competition from Big Tech incumbents and a potentially more normal summer that could lure even devoted users out of their homes and back into society. Clubhouse downloads are losing momentum as competitors emerge and people head outside. According to Sensor Tower, Clubhouse’s global app downloads shot up from 2.4 million in January to 9.6 million in February, a 300% increase, before falling back down to 2.7 million in March, a 72% drop. April brought dour news, as new downloads fell to 922,000 for the month. Clubhouse spokespeople declined to comment for this story. And since that midwinter bump, a glut of big-name entrants have announced plans to venture into social audio. There’s Twitter Spaces, Reddit Talk, Discord Stage Channels, Spotify Greenroom and also forthcoming clones from Facebook and LinkedIn. Meanwhile, smaller players like Stereo and Spoon are also vying for market share. These alternatives share a smattering of user data but are broadly in fledgling stages compared with Clubhouse. Clubhouse doesn’t currently have an ad operation, though brands have struck up sponsorships directly with creators on the platform. For their part, marketers are looking for more scale, brand safety and opportunities. The end of the pandemic could spell trouble for Clubhouse and its rivals, though. “Summertime is no doubt going to be an attention deficit because we’re starved for interaction,” said Eric John, vp of the IAB’s media center. But he thinks a lot of what Clubhouse is bringing will stick if the company and its competitors can scale up. “The longer that people engage with these media forms, the greater chances it’s going to become [an] everyday [habit],” he said. But it’s tough to listen to a social audio session at a bar or restaurant or even covertly during a work meeting once offices open up. Simple scale is Clubhouse’s largest barrier, said Nathan Young, head of strategy for Chicago studio Deloitte Digital, considering its user base hovers somewhere just north of 10 million monthly active users. That gives its rivals a leg up. “If you’re Twitter, if you’re Spotify, you don’t need to achieve scale,” Young said. “You have a wider variety of avenues for that ad to run. It’s kind of like the early days of Facebook. They announce Stories, you can click a box and put it in your mix and it’s just additional reach. But when (social audio) is the only thing you offer, that is a really, really significant challenge to overcome.” Ultimately, the staying power of Clubhouse could hinge on its simplicity to replicate. “Clubhouse was extremely disruptive,” said Geer, pointing to the company’s ability to create user demand. “But I look at this not as a whole new social platform, I look at this as a feature. … I think that the question is: Will this feature stand the test of time? Will [social] audio stand the test of time?” Editor's note: A previous version of this story mentioned that Clubhouse would be coming to Androids soon. As of Sunday, Clubhouse is now available for Android phones.

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As Hype Around Clubhouse Fades, Its Easy-to-Replicate Format Might Be Here to Stay

April saw the app's lowest month-over-month downloads yet

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