In recent times the exclusive social network Clubhouse, based on live voice conversations and which went through a moment of great attention a few months ago, is not doing too well. According to data released by the analysis company SensorTower, in January its application had been downloaded about 2.4 million times and in February as many as 9.6 million times: in March, however, the downloads were only 2.7 million and 922 thousand in April, numbers not seen since December. On March 31, the American journalist Anna Wiener, known for her memoir-book on the world of Silicon Valley La Valle Oscura, told the New Yorker that Clubhouse “seemed a bit like a party”: recently, however, it seems that “the party is over “, as Vanity Fair wrote.
The competition from other social networks is getting stronger, also because it has had rather aggressive manifestations: a few weeks ago Twitter introduced a function that clearly mimics those of Clubhouse. It was not only downloads that fell, but also and above all users who actively use Clubhouse: an analysis by the consulting firm Apptopia cited by the TechCrunch site showed that in the last month the daily active users fell by 68 percent. compared to those of last February.
Clubhouse was created in March 2020 and has become very famous in the United States especially at the beginning of 2021, gaining some interest in Italy as well, especially among journalists, digital tools experts and people with a large online following. Unlike most social networks, where messages are exchanged or images are shared, Clubhouse is designed to converse on any topic not only with those you know, but with anyone, through groups that are called “rooms”; you are asked to intervene with a symbolic show of hands, or you can simply listen to other people talking about something.
Unlike platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, where you can sign up quite freely, Clubhouse was and has remained very exclusive, in fact it is expected that you can create a profile only if you are invited by another user or by putting yourself on a waiting list. . To give the idea, Wiener said that in March already registered users were selling the codes of their invitations on eBay for up to several hundred dollars.
According to the site The Verge, Clubhouse has redefined the format of social networks, a bit like Snapchat did in the past thanks to videos and photos that are deleted after a few seconds. At the same time, however, its survival is inevitably conditioned both by competition and by the ability to keep users' interest high, as well as by some technological shortcomings and above all by the period we are experiencing.
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According to various experts, Clubhouse has had enormous success mainly thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, which at the same time has become its main limitation.
On the one hand, in fact, it introduced a new way of interacting and communicating at a time when travel restrictions were in force in most countries: and the idea of conversing on a social network could offer a more spontaneous and direct contact. than a written message or post. On the other hand, with the start of vaccination campaigns and the progressive relaxation of restrictive measures, more and more people have begun to leave the house and use it much less, making it a temporary phenomenon and mostly linked to the time spent at home. in the lockdown.
In addition, the rapid success that Clubhouse had had in recent months has also prompted other well-known social network companies – much larger and more structured – to develop new features to compete with its proposal, and which therefore could make it less attractive in the eyes of users. Twitter has introduced “Spaces”, which gives users who have more than 600 followers the ability to share live audio conversations, potentially attracting a much wider audience, given the extremely large initial pool of people registered and the social networks already structured in the course of years and years.
Another problem is that Clubhouse can only be downloaded from an iPhone or iPad running iOS 13.0 or higher, and not through Android. On Sunday the company that manages the social network announced that it is testing a first version of the app for Android, with the aim of “welcoming” users of this operating system “within the next few weeks”, but according to some is already too late.
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Furthermore, the fact that Clubhouse is accessible only by invitation on the one hand certainly helped its growth in the early period, fueling the hype (i.e. the excitement and chatter about a new product), but on the other it probably deterred users who were unable to access it immediately and ended up losing interest.
To give an example, at the beginning of April, The Information journalist Alex Heath shared on Twitter some statistics obtained by the marketing division of Clubhouse, according to which more than 6 million people were on the waiting list to get an invitation: if on the one hand this number seems enormous, but on the other hand it must be interpreted. In fact, to be able to subscribe to the waiting list it is necessary to download the application, as well as to accept the invitation of a person who is already a user. Since downloads have dropped dramatically in recent months, it probably means that relatively few new users have been on hold, and many have been waiting for a long time. Given how much perception around the social network has changed, it is not certain that once admitted they will use the platform actively.
Wiener said that at first she was thrilled to be inspired by the conversations that followed on Clubhouse: she described it as an always different, stimulating experience, which she could indulge in while resting on the sofa or folding the laundry, and which above all she would not could have done through most of the other social networks. After some time, however, she said that she had found herself moving quickly from virtual room to virtual room, like at a party where the environment has not yet been properly framed, and this had ended up making her feel “impatient and dissatisfied “: with the feeling of not remembering how and why she got there, but with the awareness of being passing through and that she would not have stayed there too long.
