Clubhouse has grown very fast, perhaps even too fast: when will the Android version arrive and when will you be able to sign up without an invitation?
If Clubhouse is the phenomenon of the moment, the reason is also (or perhaps above all) to be found in its exclusivity: to enter you need an invitation and an iPhone, because there is still no Clubhouse for Android. The idea of limiting access to this new social has paid off: the app was born in July 2020, after just three months of beta phase, and is already on everyone's lips.
And everyone is wondering if and when the Clubhouse app will arrive for Android smartphones, as well as if it will be decided to allow everyone to sign up to the voice-based social even without having received an invitation. Alpha Exploration, the company that develops Clubhouse, has actually already answered both questions: the Android app will arrive and the social will be open to everyone. It just hasn't yet said when these two things will happen and, more importantly, whether they'll happen together or in a two-step strategy. Here's what Clubhouse says and what the likely scenario is.
Clubhouse on Android: the official release
"From the earliest days, we've wanted to build Clubhouse for everyone. With that in mind, we're excited to soon begin work on our Android app and add more accessibility and localization features so that people around the world can experience Clubhouse in a way that feels native to them." Those were the words of Clubhouse's two founders, Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, in a post published on the social's official blog in late January.
That work is underway on a Clubhouse app for Android, then, is confirmed by Alpha Exploration itself. Ma ci potrebbe volere ancora del tempo prima di vederla, anche perché arrivare su Android potrebbe non essere la priorità per Clubhouse.
Clubhouse senza invito
La seconda grande domanda che tutti si fanno è quando si potrà entrare in Clubhouse senza invito. Non è una domanda da poco, perché l’enorme interesse per questa app social ha generato lo spiacevole fenomeno della vendita degli inviti su altri social.
Aprendo la piattaforma a tutti senza invito, però, la complessità del progetto aumenta esponenzialmente. Clubhouse has already been harshly criticized for not being able to moderate some of its "Rooms", in which exponents of the American racist extreme right have gathered.
There is also the big problem of privacy: Clubhouse was born as an experiment, which then seems to have got out of hand of its own creators and today, even though it is available in Europe and in Italy, it is not at all compatible with the European regulation on privacy (the famous GDPR). The Italian Privacy Guarantor has noticed this and, apparently, has already sent a letter to Alpha Exploration.
Clubhouse: two-step strategy?
With these starting points, it's unlikely that the opening to everyone even without an invitation and the Android app will come quickly and, above all, simultaneously. Alpha Exploration would have to manage from one day to the next a potential audience of over 2 billion users.
It is not to be excluded, therefore, a two-step strategy: first open the platform to all iOS users, in order to test and strengthen it and, only after, open it to Android users. And, in the meantime, write a GDPR-compliant privacy policy.