- Clubhouse no longer requires an invite.
- New users will be gradually added to the app from the waitlist, which served as a technical fix for the app's beta.
- The opening follows a slide in user downloads and an android rollout earlier this year.
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Clubhouse is opening up membership to new users without needing an invite to join.
The audio-first social app hosts a variety of live, user-led conversations in virtual chat rooms. The app was originally only open to people who received an invitation from a Clubhouse member, an integral part of its early identity in the social media space as an exclusive freeform conversation space where users could log on to chat and listen to everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Mark Zuckerberg.
There are around 10 million new users on the waitlist, and they will gradually be added to the app overtime, The Verge reported on Wednesday.
The company's exclusive, invite-only waitlist system was devised as a technical solution for the app's early growth, with the app essentially in a beta-testing period for the past year, a Clubhouse spokesperson told Insider on Wednesday. But its goal has always been a wide release once the company could logistically support it, the spokesperson said.
"We got to a point from a technical proficiency standpoint, and also the community has scaled to such a level now, where basically we believe we can handle the influx of millions of people," the spokesperson said.
The announcement comes after a drop in new downloads earlier this year and a subsequent launch on Android that boosted new user signups. In June, the audio chat app was downloaded around 7.8 million times across Android and iOS, according to data from research firm Sensor Tower shared with Insider - almost twice as many as the previous month.
The company also released a new text-based feature, Backchannel, last week.
Meanwhile, members who joined during the invite-only era of Clubhouse will get to keep the invitation badge on their profile (which indicates when you were invited and by whom) as an indicator of how long they have been using the app.