Clubhouse to Monetise Platform, Achieves Millions of Users in Nigeria
Given the fast growing rate of the social audio application, Clubhouse is considering monetising the platform for users and also introducing a general lease policy before the end of the year to accommodate more users while growing its community.
The company made this known during a virtual media parley.The Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Clubhouse, Mr. Paul Davison, explained that although the company does not have a set time for monetisation, users should expect monetisation of the app before the end of the year.
The platform, which launched in the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in February 2020, is a free social media app powered by voice where people discuss an infinite number of topics in, ‘rooms.’ The absence of video allows people to focus on speaking with one another versus talking at them.
While fielding questions from journalists Davison said: “Clubhouse is gaining popularity throughout Nigeria and across the globe with millions of people jumping into a wide array of live discussions around music, sports, business, and every other imaginable subject. It is focused on its vision of building an exciting, thriving, creator community in Nigeria and around the world. However, we don’t have any set time right now for monetisation but probably later this year. I don’t know if that is summer or fall or later but sometime around that, and that is our hope.”
Davison noted that with the general lease policy, users could leverage on the platform to better manage their time through the day as it uses lesser data and affords users the luxury of doing other things online unlike the video app.
“From a creator perspective, this means you don’t have to worry about what you look like, how messy your house is,or holding the phone up and staring into it for hours. I think it fits into parts of your day in a different way and it is a live experience,” he said.
Meanwhile, Clubhouse has since its launch 16 months ago, received criticisms with projections of its market viability and controversy on its privacy restriction which does not enable recording of audio contents.
Davison, while responding to some of the challenges, said his team was working to enhance the user interface to make room for general lease to allow everyone join in and explore the dynamic offers that the app gives.
Another Co-founded of Clubhouse, Rohan Seth, said: “We have seen first-hand, what we have always believed, that the need to gather with other humans is universal. One thing we have always felt from the beginning was to align our business or incentives to that of our users or creators and do things differently from some of the other networks. With that in mind, one of the things we want to do is to fund our business by investing in direct creative monetisation.”