Clubhouse has reported a big increase in active rooms as it continues to expand in the wake of its full launch last month, while it's also announced some changes to its Club roles and notification volume, as it seeks to refine its offerings.
First off, on usage - at its weekly Town Hall update this week, Clubhouse announced that it's now facilitating 600,000 rooms per day in the app, up from 300,000 back in May.
Clubhouse downloads had seen a significant slowdown between March and May, which many attributed to the arrival of Twitter Spaces, along with the lack of Clubhouse accessibility, with the app still only available on iOS, and in invite-only mode. Following Clubhouse's Android app launch in May, however, its numbers have started to pick up and regain its growth momentum. Clubhouse says that it's added 10 million users since mid-May, a significant jump on the 2 million in total that it reported back in January.
The app is also gaining momentum in India, where Android is by far the dominant OS. India has now become a big focus for the app. Audio social provides specific advantage in the Indian market, given that 121 different languages are spoken in the region, and more people are able to understand many of these languages by ear than they're able to read them in text form. Add to that the live nature of the discussion, which enables more open interaction, free from Indian Government interference, and you can see why the app has taken off.
Many of these 300,000 new rooms would now be originating in India, while Clubhouse has also launched Indian specific creator funding to help fuel its growth in the region.
With a total population of more than 1.3 billion, it makes sense for Clubhouse to make India a bigger focus - but it is worth noting this specific growth when considering the potential of the app for reaching audience segments, and for your own marketing needs. If you are considering Clubhouse as a possible addition to your digital marketing approach, it's worth spending some time in the app to get an understanding of which discussions are now gaining traction.
In addition to its usage numbers, Clubhouse has also announced that it's reducing its notifications "to 1/3 current volume", while also working to show each user better and more relevant updates, which will be welcome news for users.
It's also adding new improvements to its Backchannel messaging option, including the capacity to side-swipe to start a chat thread with room speakers, as well as a new archive option. Clubhouse launched its complimentary chat option in the middle of last month, and it's already reached 100 million messages sent, from over 1.2M unique senders.
And finally, Clubhouse is also making some changes to Club management, with club 'Followers' to be removed as an option, with all new Clubs only able to have 'Members' instead.
Clubhouse is also adding a new 'Leaders' role to help maximize Club engagement.
"Leaders can start rooms and schedule events that all club members can see, but can’t edit club settings, edit the club name, or add/remove members. Admins can choose which trusted club members to designate as Leaders."
The new roles will provide more capacity to better manage and maintain communities within the app.
It still feels like Clubhouse is up against it, with Twitter and Facebook making their own pushes on audio social, which do look set to eventually squeeze Clubhouse out of many markets. That's likely to become a bigger issue from this week, when Twitter removes its Fleets option, with active Spaces set to take up that top of feed bar in the app instead.
That will put more emphasis on Twitter's audio rooms, while it's also close to rolling out its dedicated Spaces tab to further highlight in-progress discussions.
That will give people less reason to switch to Clubhouse, while also providing more reach incentive for creators.
The path forward for Clubhouse, then, could be Indian usage - and as noted, if you are considering Clubhouse as a potential digital marketing option, it would be worth taking a deeper dive into its usage data and seeing if your target audience is active in the app.
