Clubhouse for Android is now out, slow expansion explained

By now, you're probably tired of hearing how this or that new social network or feature is designed to take on Clubhouse. Although the audio-only platform has become so popular, its reach is actually extremely limited compared to the likes of Facebook and Twitter. In fact, it's only now that it's opening up its doors to Android users but even then it comes with a lot of caveats. Despite that, the startup isn't changing its pace and explains why it's adopting a measured approach to growth instead.

Clubhouse's popularity even caught the fledgling social network itself by surprise. It said that it intentionally took a measured growth strategy in order to build its community at the same time as the network while keeping its team small. Unfortunately, the world seemed to have had other plans.

Clubhouse started growing rapidly to the point that the server was experiencing outages and systems got under heavy stress. This forced Clubhouse to shift its focus on its own team and infrastructure instead of community and feature building. Many networks would have been happy with that growth surge but Clubhouse was also worried. That said, it said that it proved how universal that voice medium is and it's expanding its reach to meet that need.

Clubhouse for Android is still in beta but is now available for download for all. That means that it still has a lot of missing features, including linking to Twitter or in-app translations. It still doesn't have the new payments system that Clubhouse recently launched either.

The biggest limitation is that it's still invite-only and available only in the US. That, Clubhouse insists, is by choice. That, of course, gives the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and many others the opportunity to encroach into Clubhouse's territory even before it can fully open its doors.