New York, New York - Clubhouse announced on Wednesday that it is ditching its signature invite-only structure in favor of a more open model, which will allow anyone to join a public livestream at any time – no wait list required.

Additionally, all users are now allowed to host public, live-streamed discussion forums.

Now that the app has officially graduated from its beta testing stage, its developers are ready to tackle a larger audience. The timing makes sense, given that Twitter and Spotify have both introduced competing services.

In the summer of 2020, Clubhouse launched as an exclusive chat room among technology and business professionals in Silicon Valley. It has since ballooned to accommodate millions of users across the country, who often flock to the streamer to hear influencers and celebrities answer questions about their lives and work in real time.

Just nine months after its modest debut, the Clubhouse app was valued at a whopping $1 billion.

Among the many prominent figures who have boosted their brand via Clubhouse within its first 16 months of operation are Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, Mark Zuckerberg, Ashton Kutcher, and Chris Rock.

Others, such as rising musician Bomani X, have emerged as Clubhouse celebrities by promoting themselves and their art to hordes of loyal listeners.

"It can get weird," X told the LA Times of his newfound fame earlier this year. "I'm definitely not a celebrity in real life, but Clubhouse has a celebrity culture on the app."

"We know there will be many more ups and downs as we scale, and competition from the large networks will be fierce," said cofounders Rohan Seth and Paul Davison in a joint statement.

"But we believe the future is created by optimists – and we're excited to keep working to build a different kind of social network."