At moments in early 2021, Silicon Valley was awash with talk that live audio discussion app Clubhouse would be the future of social media.
After gaining some traction towards the end of last year, it exploded in 2021 as the fastest-growing social media app in history. It aimed to popularise audio rather than text or pictures as the next big social medium as people looked for ways to communicate in lockdowns, and drew comparisons to Snap or TikTok.
But as the end of the year approaches, Clubhouse’s bubble appears to have burst, as the mania around the app subsided, downloads fell dramatically and the company faced an onslaught of competing products from larger technology groups, such as Meta and Twitter.