About a year ago, we published our first blog post (Check 1...2...3. Is this thing on?) — back when Clubhouse was just the two of us, a rough prototype, and a small, wonderful community of beta testers. We had been thinking about how to build a new, more human place on the Internet for a while — where everyone could stop by to talk, have fun, share in meaningful moments, deepen friendships, hang out and learn. Conversation is what makes us human and so much good happens when people come together to talk, but when life is busy, real connection can be hard to find. We wanted there to be more of that in the world.
Twelve never-boring months later, we’re thrilled to share that Clubhouse is now out of beta, open to everyone, and ready to begin its next chapter. This means we have removed our waitlist system so that anyone can join. If you have a club, you can post your link far and wide. If you are a creator with an audience, you can bring them all on. If you’re hosting a public event, anyone can attend. You can bring close friends, classmates, family members, coworkers, and anyone else you like — on iOS or Android.
The invite system has been an important part of our early history. By adding people in waves, welcoming new faces each week in our Wednesday Orientations, and talking with the community each Sunday in Town Hall, we’ve been able to grow Clubhouse in a measured way, and (mostly 😬 ) keep things from breaking as we’ve scaled. But we’ve always wanted Clubhouse to be open. Everyone in the world should have access to meaningful conversations. And the best rooms on Clubhouse are the ones where you meet people from far outside your social circle, with very different views and lived experiences, who change your perspective on the world.
It’s been a rollercoaster first half of the year, and we’ve emerged much bigger than we were in January. Our team has gone from 8 people to 58. The number of daily rooms has grown from 50k to half a million. We’ve added 10M people to the community since we launched Android in mid-May, and seen 90M DMs sent since we launched Backchannel last week. The average listener now spends over an hour a day on Clubhouse, and a huge percentage of people don’t just listen, but actually talk. That’s our favorite part of the whole thing. Meanwhile the breadth of communities and clubs continues to grow each day, across the world, in all sorts of surprising ways. It’s incredibly exciting, but we know we have a lot more to build over the weeks, months and years to come.
We suspect there will be many more ups and downs as we scale, and competition from the large networks will be fierce. But we believe the future is created by optimists, and we’re excited to build something new on the Internet — a place based on human connection and lively conversations, where you always feel welcome and free to be yourself. We’ll be growing our team quite a bit as we do this, so if you’re interested in building with us, we’d love to hear from you.
After 16 months, a company should probably have a logo too, so we finally got one of those, along with a new website that Molly and Aaron designed last week — with the one and only Justin “Meezy” Williams representing the Clubhouse community as our new app icon. (👋 Hey Meezy!)
The new release is out today on iOS and Android, and we’ll be shipping big new updates for you every 1-2 weeks.
That’s it for now. Thank you for being part of the Clubhouse community — now open to all! :)
- Paul, Rohan and the Clubhouse team
