The fast rise and epic fall of Clubhouse
In 2020 and 2021, the world of social media seemed poised to completely change. A new app called TikTok was booming, bringing a whole new type of vertical video to phones around the world. And another app – less popular, but rapidly growing and already hugely influential among the tech set – seemed to have a whole new social idea on its hands. It was called Clubhouse, and there was a huge bet that audio could be the future. It was the next big thing, until it wasn’t.
On this episode of Version history, we tell the story of how Clubhouse began and how a simple audio group chat app transformed into a booming entertainment and creative platform. Platform Casey Newton and Bloomberg Ashley Carman joins David Pierce to talk about how the app works, why tech people care so much about it, and ultimately how the timing was the best and worst thing that ever happened to Clubhouse. What would the app have been without a global pandemic and months of lockdown that left people scrambling to find any kind of connection? We will never know. But it would have been different.
This is the second episode of the third season of Version history. Here’s how to get every episode and all our other fun content as soon as it’s released:
And if you want to learn more about the full history of Clubhouse – and, yes, reminisce a little about life during lockdown – here are some links to get you started.
