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By now you\\u2019ve been blasted with news and opinions about Clubhouse, the hit invite-only audio app that\\u2019s been taking the business and marketing world by storm. But did you know that there\\u2019s a tonne of clones on the way as well?

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This is Clickstarter, the Australian digital marketing podcast. I\\u2019m Dante St James.

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Clubhouse is worth $1 billion dollars now. It\\u2019s got some 50 million people connected to it (that\\u2019s about the same as what MySpace was at its peak before Facebook happened. Those who love it, love it, but it\\u2019s been slowing down considerably due to how long it\\u2019s been taking them to bring out an Android app, and open the app up to everyone, not just the lucky few who have been invited.

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And it\\u2019s this slowness to scale up that\\u2019s meant there is an opening for every other player. Enter Twitter, Facebook, venture capitalist Mark Cuban and Stereo.

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With it\\u2019s hundreds of millions of users, it makes sense for Twitter to move in on Clubhouse\\u2019s turf. Twitter calls their Clubhouse clone, Spaces. And really it\\u2019s nothing all that new. It\\u2019s a rebrand and de-videoing of their live video function, Periscope. It was a big deal back when a similar app called Meerkat was about. Periscope pretty much killed Meerkat. Then Facebook Live made Periscope redundant. Now Periscope is back, but this time as a audio-only app called Spaces within Twitter. Just like Clubhouse it has rooms, hand raising, invitations to speak and moderation of rooms. The only difference is that it\\u2019s tied to your Twitter account, so if you\\u2019ve got Twitter, you\\u2019re going to have spaces very soon once it moved out of Beta testing.

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It was only a matter of time before the big blue giant made a move into audio chat. Facebook is trialling an app called Hotline. It\\u2019s not strictly a Clubhouse clone as it\\u2019s built around the concept of the Q&A or Questions and Answers. You join a hotline being hosted by one of more people and you ask a question that is sent to the hosts who then answer your question. It\\u2019s a little like an interactive version of the Q&A website, Quora, or even like Q&A within Zoom webinars. Facebook isn\\u2019t making a huge amount of noise about this yet though, so don\\u2019t get too excited. I honestly expected this kind of function to be more useful over at LinkedIn, but I guess only time will tell.

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Given that Clubhouse is a Silicon Valley start-up built upon tens of millions of dollars in venture capital, it was only a matter of a hot second before a famous venture capitalist would break ranks and start their own version of Clubhouse. Mark Cuban is kinda one of the original gangsters of the California start-up funding scene and has put his many millions into investments with big winners and big losers.

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His red hot go at an audio app is called Fireside. It\\u2019s meant to replicate the feel of the typical corporate and jetsetter \\u201cfireside chat\\u201d where an influential rich person would be interviewed by a crackling fireplace by some famous interviewer or news anchor and it would be considered to be an exclusive event where people would see a different and more human side of the rich or famous.

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Fireside isn\\u2019t really taking off right now though, so I don\\u2019t expect it to last much longer.

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This year, if you\\u2019ve been on an app store and searched for Clubhouse you\\u2019ve probably been served an ad for another app called Stereo. And just like you, everyone else has been skipping over it to get to the app that they actually want. The one way into the market for Stereo has been Android. At the time of writing, Clubhouse still isn\\u2019t on Android, is still invite-only and has no published date of arrival beyond iPhones.\\xa0 So you\\u2019d think that this would be a great opening for Stereo.

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But not so. It\\u2019s still failing to get downloads because it\\u2019s not Clubhouse, even if it does all the same stuff as Clubhouse does. And that\\u2019s because no one is there. I installed Stereo and gave it a try. There were no Australian rooms on there at all, and only a scattering of American ones which were 50% about bitcoin trading and 50% about making six figures through working only 2 days a week or something like that.

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If you\\u2019re on Android and still waiting, keep waiting because this is not an alternative. And ultimately, I\\u2019m expecting the Clubhouse bubble to burst at some point this year, even after it launches on Android, simply because it ignores the basic trend in content consumption that has been reducing network television and radio to rubble over the last decade, you have to listen live. There is no recorded option to listen to later. So if the best stuff is happening in Pacific Standard Time in the US, you\\u2019re going to be sleeping like a log and you\\u2019ll miss it all.

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I\\u2019m Dante St James. You can learn more about digital marketing the Australian way at clickstarter.com.au, and give your business all the tools it needs to get known, get found and stay known.