Clubhouse: Whatever Happened to The Best App in 2021

This app had so much potential — Now everything is gone

9 min readFeb 22

I remember the first day I joined Clubhouse in January 2021. The app, even within its invite-only status at that time, was full of rooms, voices, discussions, and people ready to network.

Within short few days, I was connected to poets, entrepreneurs, news anchors, singers, songwriters, radio hosts; you name it. Everyone was on the app.

Everyone was open to talking. In no app other than Clubhouse would I have the chance to meet such amazing people. And in its early days, people would follow each other immediately on Instagram or Twitter — Many of which I’m still friends with over Instagram even though I do not use Clubhouse anymore.

While I was active on Clubhouse, I had the most significant and fastest social media growth for my accounts. I managed to gather 1000+ followers in less than two weeks. And the trend was not slowing down.

In July 2021, the app was open for anyone to join without an invitation. However, by then, the hype was already gone, and no one cared for Clubhouse anymore. The hosts or content creators on the platform moved on. The app wasn’t in the public eye anymore. By 2023, no one is even talking about Clubhouse anymore — so what did happen to Clubhouse? and what went wrong?

The rise of Clubhouse — A new giant

It was luck mixed together with that sweet feeling of exclusivity that made Clubhouse what it was.

The app launched in March 2020 on iOS only at a time when people were stuck at home. Two months later and backed by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, the app was assessed to be worth $100 million — The app was still in Beta.

Clubhouse attracted people very fast. Big names in pop culture were on the app, such as Kevin Hart, Elon Musk, Ashton Kutcher, etc. These big names would tweet that they’ll be talking in a room on Clubhouse, and people without invites to the app would go nuts trying to secure an invite — A brilliant recipe for success. The app was still in Beta, and people needed an invite to gain access to the app.