Remember Clubhouse, the live audio app that was supposed to be the Next Big Thing in social media? Well its 15 minutes of fame may be long over, but the company is now embracing parts of other popular apps to regain relevance.
Clubhouse is currently testing an in-room gaming feature for iOS and Android, TechCrunch reported on Tuesday. The game, called "Wild Cards," is basically a conversation starter for people who don't know each other. Users have to answer questions, like the best idea for a TV show or the name of a movie that everyone loves, in a short amount of time.
The feature, currently available only in English, calls to mind a Discord server, which also mixes live audio chats with bots that let users play games together (among other activities). The Clubhouse in-room gaming feature comes just weeks after Clubhouse added an optional text chat feature — similar to what users have long been able to do on platforms like Twitch, YouTube and Discord — which allows users to type their responses rather than needing to use audio. To encourage engagement, Clubhouse also recently announced that it is testing a "wave bar," which displays which of your friends are online and looks somewhat like the "Stories" bar on Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook.
Clubhouse, which began as an invite-only iOS app, gained popularity early in the pandemic, but it has struggled to hold onto its audience as the world reopened. Clubhouse also has, until recently, been slow to add new features and is also fending off competition from Twitter Spaces, Twitter's audio chatroom feature, which already has a built-in audience of hundreds of millions of active users. As Clubhouse downloads drop and new users stall, Clubhouse is attempting to play catch-up by adding features that other, more popular apps already offer.
Climate TRACE's data show emissions at the facility-level.Image: Climate TRACE