Clubhouse, pandemic era’s favourite app, is trying to stay relevant. When lockdowns were taking place all around the world, the invite-only app climbed to the top of download charts and had 10x month-to-month growth and investors splurged money on the company.

Everything has changed for Clubhouse. It is trying to remain relevant with a new format called ‘chats’. The “new Clubhouse” is trying to be more of a “messaging app”. The ‘chat’ aspect can be compared to a group Instagram Story where you contribute using your voice. Record a voice message and then you can send that around to your friends. They can join in and add their own voice recordings to continue with the conversation.

With Chats you can push to talk, listen at 2x, tap to skip, swipe to the next Chat, and slide into your friends’ VMs to chat privately. Clubhouse is saying that their ‘chats’ are better than group texting.

“Voice makes them more personal than text. With Chats, you can hear your friends laugh, sense when they seem tired or sick, smile when they get animated, and look at their faces when they’re talking. You actually get to know people. And if you like, you can sing to them,” reads an official announcement from the company.

All these features may even position the app to be like a Snapchat where smaller groups of friends communicate. “It’s not about passively listening to people speaking…. You can listen to great conversations on podcasts, YouTube, TikTok, and a lot of other platforms. It’s about talking with people — sharing ideas, pushing back, cracking up over inside jokes, going late into the night, getting to know each other’s quirk.”

The popularity of Clubhouse has dived as there are better options in the form of Spaces on Elon Musk’s X. The new features could be critical for Clubhouse. In April, the company cut more than half of its staff, and last year the company had conducted another round of layoffs.