Subscriber growth on social audio app Clubhouse has fallen off a cliff as users complain of increased scammers and annoying chats about Bitcoin and NFTs.
The number of new installs of the app plunged in March to 2.7 million downloads from 9.6 million in February, according to data from app analytics company Sensor Tower.
The high numbers in February were largely credited to a boost by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who joined the Clubhouse app within a few days of each other.
It is expected that Clubhouse app installs will fall even further. Data through April 18 shows an even steeper decline, with 643,000 installs.
The decline in new installs comes as Twitter, Spotify, Facebook, Telegram, Discord and LinkedIn are all prepping similar features to compete with Clubhouse’s live audio streaming rooms.
Despite its dwindling new user numbers, Clubhouse has been able to attract an undisclosed amount of funding that it says will support a fresh burst of growth for the app. Some investors have valued Clubhouse at about $8 billion.
Twitter reportedly broke off talks to acquire the startup at a $4 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg.
But like anything else born of the internet and tech world, the buzz of Clubhouse and its allure as an invitation-only social platform has come with its pitfalls, including scammers targeting users and too many chatrooms about Bitcoin and NFTs. One-of-a-kind digital assets that exist on the blockchain, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) can be anything from a social media post to a painting.
Twitter user Guilherme (@guilhermelage91) said having “Nfts, bitcoin & how to be a millionaire rooms everywhere” has ruined the experience of using the app. “There’s a lot of scams in clubhouse right now and it’s getting boring,” he said.
There are also concerns over the safety of using the Clubhouse app, with some users complaining that some conversations have turned anti-Semitic and adversarial against the media.
“One of the biggest ‘scams’ Clubhouse has been able to pull is making people believe rooms are a safe space lol. Clubhouse rooms as we have all seen, are many times more dangerous than Twitter,” said Tech Lawyer Moe on her Twitter handle @Mochievous.
