A week after the exclusive social audio platform Clubhouse announced the launch of its Android version (as a beta version for US users), the social media network took it one step further as it announced in a Twitter post about the expansion of its Android app worldwide by Friday, May 21, starting with Japan Russia, and Brazil on May 18, followed by India and Nigeria on Friday morning, and the rest of the world throughout the week.
Seen as a move to check the plummeting downloads of the invite-only app on iOS in recent months, Clubhouse, backed by A16z, Tiger Global, and DST Global and valued at about $4 billion is gearing up for its global debut on Android.
Clubhouse was an immediate success when it entered the arena at the beginning of the pandemic, and while it remained an invite-only app exclusively on iOS until recently, it accumulated millions of users in its inaugural year and attracted the attention of high-profile users like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Clubhouse’s expansion into Android is long overdue, especially since downloads in March dropped to 2.7 million in March and below a million in April. The fact that other platforms have started to copy Clubhouse’s format – Facebook, Spotify, and LinkedIn are working on their own versions of Clubhouse, Twitter launched Spaces, and Discord’s Stage Channels made an entrance – have not made it easy for Clubhouse either. It has not strayed from its invite-only system, saying that this is part of its effort to “keep the growth measured.” Clubhouse has made a recent focus on creators and announced that it would be funding 50 audio shows made by creators on its platform.
“As we head into the summer and continue to scale out the back end, we plan to begin opening up even further, welcoming millions of more people in 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,” Clubhouse cited. The platform had started developing the Android app this January. However, it still lacks several features, leading users to face problems like the inability to follow a topic, create or manage a club, not having in-app translations link their social profiles, make payments, or change their profile name or user name.
Considering that Clubhouse made its debut only last year, it has seen a meteoric rise since then. That is, until recently. Clubhouse hopes that the global launch of its Android app would be sufficient enough to recover lost ground, and starting this Friday, you can experience Clubhouse’s Android app first-hand.
