Audio-Social App Clubhouse Hits Over 8 Million Downloads

Clubhouse, which acts as an audio app for people to listen to various speakers, has over 8 million downloads since its launch last year, according to a Thursday (Feb. 18) report from App Annie.

The report credited the past year of the pandemic with its new ways of social interaction in the absence of physical normal avenues.

Clubhouse, which is invitation-only and had 3.5 million views as of Feb. 1, shot up to over 8 million by Feb. 16. The upshot in popularity also likely had to do with big-name figures such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg appearing there recently, the report said.

The app also rapidly gained popularity in the U.K., Germany, Brazil and Turkey.

The popularity of Clubhouse has now led to competitive audio apps also starting up, including Facebook looking into starting one, according to reports. Audio-social app Quilt is in the running too.

And global companies like Dizhua, Tiya and Yalla are attracting new interest with apps that have already been around several months, or, in Yalla’s case, since 2016, according to App Annie. The interest is global too, with users in China, the U.S., Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others downloading those companies’ apps.

While audio has been big as of late, video is also seeing more social media usage as Twitch, usually used for video game streaming, is now expanding into more general conversations. Snapchat, likewise, has introduced a new feature called Spotlight that can let users create their own videos.

PYMNTS previously said that Clubhouse had around 2 million weekly users already in January 2021, along with a $100 million investment from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz to grow the platform.

The service allows users to interact in a different way from liking or sharing posts as one does on the established ones. Instead, the users have a full conversation, speaking and listening to one another in various set-up rooms.