Now anyone can join Clubhouse, the new epidemic’s hottest new social media app

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The Clubhouse, where members join virtual rooms for live, unscripted discussions, said Wednesday that it won’t be just invited or running a queue to join the app. All iOS and Android users in the US and abroad can now sign up.

The platform was launched in March 2020 when the pandemic hit the US and many of them were stuck at home. It quickly became the talk of Silicon Valley and caught the attention of the larger social networks. By January 2021, the Clubhouse was reported to be worth $1 billion. Club founders Paul Davison and Rohan Seth said in a blog post in January that they plan to “scale up… as quickly as possible and open it up to everyone soon.” The company said Wednesday that the Android version of the app, which launched in May, has passed 10 million downloads.

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

But the decision to open the platform comes because the app not only has to compete with the resurgence of IRL pools in the US and other markets, it also has to compete with newly launched products from more established social media platforms. Twitter began experimenting with “Spaces” in December and launched Facebook Live Audio Rooms in late June.

According to data from Sensor Tower, which tracks mobile apps, Clubhouse has seen a significant drop in monthly iOS downloads in recent months from a peak of 9.6 million downloads in February to just 719,000 in May. Overall, the app has reached nearly 29.8 million installs globally via the App Store and Google Play, according to Sensor Tower.

But Clubhouse suggested participation on the podium is still strong.

Clubhouse said nearly 500,000 rooms are created on the platform every day, with the average user spending about an hour a day on the app. Last week, it announced an option to send direct messages to people on the Clubhouse app, called “Backchannel.” The company said about 90 million messages had been sent. (Previously, people had to find each other off-platform to engage in text-based conversation.) In its short lifespan, Clubhouse has already faced a number of questions about whether it was equipped to handle moderate harmful speech and abuse on its site. platform, with some members and critics publicly sharing examples of anti-Semitism, misinformation, and harassment. While the company has added some security features, there have also been concerns about measures meant to help.

“We know there will be a lot of ups and downs with expansion, and competition from the big networks will be fierce. But we believe the future is made by optimists — and we’re excited to continue working to build a different kind of social network,” Davison and Seth wrote.

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