After an earlier private beta teased last week, Clubhouse today announced that it would be making its debut on Android after an earlier announcement this year. The app had taken off in the heyday of the pandemic and spawned many imitators, but had neglected the Android market for a while. There are a few caveats. This is still a beta, it’s still invite-only, and you’ll need to be in the U.S. to use it (though an expansion to other English-speaking markets has been promised.)
Writing over on the Clubhouse blog, the team said:
Our plan over the next few weeks is to collect feedback from the community, fix any issues we see and work to add a few final features like payments and club creation before rolling it out more broadly. […]As a part of the effort to keep the growth measured, we will be continuing the waitlist and invite system, ensuring that each new community member can bring along a few close friends.
There are still a couple of missing features in this initial release. Clubhouse highlights them over on a separate FAQ:
- Topic following
- Localization and in-app translations
- Club creation or club management
- Twitter account or Instagram account linking
- Update name or update username in-app
- Sidebar
- Payments (currently U.S. only for iOS)
- You can report someone from their profile but reporting via the recent speaker choice will be coming soon
You’ll also be able to use Clubhouse only on Android 8.0 and above, though that shouldn’t be an issue for any of the best Android phones.
Clubhouse appeared to be dragging its feet on the Android app, allowing competitors to swoop in. Twitter’s Spaces for example is already available and more widely accessible to more users as of now than Clubhouse. Could this release help stop users from leaving? It’s hard to say at this point. It’s worth noting that Snapchat’s revival of its Android app led to a growth in userbase even when competitors had copied its raison d’etre, so Clubhouse might be able to regain lost ground if it builds its app out quickly enough.
You can download Clubhouse from the Google Play Store here if you’re in the U.S. Clubhouse says the app will debut in the UK and other english-speaking countries in “the coming days”, and you can already pre-register if you’re in the UK.
