Clubhouse is pivoting from live audio to group messaging – Engadget

Clubhouse, once the Silicon Valley darling of pandemic-era social media, announced earlier this year that it was laying off half its staff as its founders pivoted to building “Clubhouse 2.0.” Now, the company is sharing the results of its big reset, with a redesign meant to make Clubhouse “more like a messaging app.” The audio app is pivoting from its signature “drop-in” audio conversations to friend-centric voice chats, the company said in an update. Instead of sprawling rooms where users host live-streamed conversations open to any and all of the app’s users, the new Clubhouse will instead encourage users to join groups with people they know. The groups are, somewhat confusingly, called “chats,” and allow friends and friends-of-friends to exchange voice messages. There’s still a “drop-in” element, but it’s less focused on real-time talking and geared more toward something like an Instagram Story — a destination for checking in and sharing quick updates. The app is also ditching text-based direct messages in favor of private audio messages which, yes, it’s calling voicemails or VMs. The biggest shift, however, isn’t just the format of the conversations but that Clubhouse is now positioning itself as more of a Snapchat, where smaller groups
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