the.com/clubhouse

The app that proved FOMO can be a business model, briefly.

means A building or room set aside for a club's members to gather, relax, and use shared facilities.

from Simply 'club' plus 'house' — 'club' emerging in the 1600s from an earlier sense of a group 'clubbing together,' pooling money or effort for a shared purpose, like splitting a tavern bill. By the 1800s 'clubhouse' named the physical home of such a group — golf clubs and social clubs especially — and later stretched to sports locker rooms, treehouses, and eventually, briefly, an app that made a virtual room feel like the most exclusive one in town.

peak valuation
4 billion dollars, no app store app yet
golden era
2020 lockdowns, invite-only, audio-only, ego-only
downfall
everyone else copied the feature, invites stopped mattering
legacy
taught Twitter and Facebook to build Spaces, then died
the.com · every word