Twitter was in talks to buy Clubhouse for as much as $4 billion
According to Bloomberg, Clubhouse recently held conversations with Twitter over a possible acquisition of the popular audio only social media app. Citing "people familiar with the matter," today's report said that the price tag of a possible purchase of Clubhouse went as high as $4 billion. Talks are no longer taking place although the reason why is not clear.
Once the talks with Twitter broke down, Clubhouse reportedly decided that it would be better to raise money via a new round of funding from investors that valued the firm at about $4 billion. Clubhouse allows members to host audio chats similar to talk radio with guest interviews and panel discussions. While only a year old, Clubhouse has already hosted some big names as guests including Bill Gates who admitted his preference for Android over iOS on the platform back in February.
Clubhouse and Twitter discussed a $4 billion deal
Twitter has already started beta testing its own version of Clubhouse which it calls Spaces. The latter launched late last year and while Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is said to be high on the concept of audio chats on Twitter, Spaces has yet to fully roll out to all Twitter users. Bruce Falck, the head of revenue product at Twitter, said at a press event today that the company is looking at ways to monetize Spaces.
Other big names in the tech sector are hopping aboard this train as firms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Slack are supposedly looking to add Clubhouse-like capabilities to their apps. Right now, subscribers can become a member of Clubhouse by invitation only, and the app is available only in the Apple App Store. Last month Clubhouse founder Paul Davison said that it might take "a couple of months" for an Android version of the app to appear.
Clubhouse's growth is throttled at the moment by its invite only rule. Still, the growth potential is immense at current rates. In December, the app was believed to have 600,000 weekly active users and that number hit ten million weekly active users in February according to Davison.
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