Clubhouse Announces Rebrand to Shortcut

Clubhouse has announced that it will be undergoing a rebranding due to brand confusion with the other Clubhouse. The company that operates its website on the Clubhouse.io domain name announced that it will be rebranding as Shortcut. The company appears to have been able to acquire Shortcut.com in advance of the rebranding news (Whois is private, so I can not independently confirm).

Clubhouse announced the news today on Twitter:

I think it is pretty obvious why Clubhouse.io is changing its name to Shortcut. Another company called Clubhouse has quickly become the more well-known Clubhouse, as the company explained in today’s blog post announcing the forthcoming change:

“For many of you, the reason for this is probably pretty obvious. The Clubhouse Audio App became so big so fast that we couldn’t possibly hope to forever maintain our own brand standing in the face of their popularity.”

The chat app, which gained serious traction in early 2021, acquired its brand match Clubhouse.com domain name in the Spring for an undisclosed amount of money. Clubhouse.io was almost forced to rebrand with no chance of getting the .com and a big challenge of competing for brand recognition.

Clubhouse.io did well with its rebranding decision, particularly because it seems to have acquired the brand match .com domain name from the start. At the time of publication, Shortcut.com forwards to Clubhouse.io, but I presume that will change at some point in the very near future.

I reached out to the former owner of Shortcut.com to ask if he could share the sale price, and he declined to do so. When I inquired about the domain name 10+ years ago, it was the same registrant and I was told the domain name was not for sale.

Clubhouse.io was put in a tough spot when the other Clubhouse became the Clubhouse brand. I think this rebrand and acquisition was well done.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

12 COMMENTS

  1. I suspect this is a bit of a cluster, both Clubhouse.io and Clubhouse (.com) have had their trademarks knocked back because of a clash with theclubhousenetwork.org.

    Needs a lawyer to dig into it and give an opinion on what is really going on.

  2. Another case of mindless one word .com syndrome.

    It’s similar to how people were duped into “any blue will do” and “vote blue no matter who” when the Dem primary was rigged and sabotaged again for 2020. No, not any one word .com will do.

    For anyone living on this planet, the main question is: “is this a good naming and branding choice?” And the answer is a big fat no. Sad. “A” for wishful thinking, “F” for the rest. I doubt it was cheap or that they could not have bought a far better name.

    • I think this was likely priced on the lower side. They made a good decision here in my view.

      I suspect this is another stripe.com scenario where they have tried a bunch of names and just bought the best value one.

      • I do not agree that it was priced on the lower side. I have tried to buy other domain names from this seller, and that is not the impression I have.

  3. Keeping in view their product is “Project Management for Software Teams”, Shortcut.com carries slightly negative sentiment imho.

    What do you guys think?

    • I was thinking the same thing too – it partly fails the “negative connotation” test in addition to everything else you can say about it.

    • Despite how one can argue for a positive connotation too. But if you have to argue it, and you do, and there is ambiguity and uncertainty, you already have a problem.

      • BS, some companies brand with hugely negative terms. Hard to even find where the negative connotation is. They have done very well getting this name.

        • You are arguing against someone who said it completely fails, not someone who said it partly fails while one can still argue for a positive connotation. That’s called a straw man. Those of us who are in agreement here about the overall nature of this decision are right. You are not. Each domain and naming is unique, and what you might call hugely negative may not be truly negative at all.

          Bottom line: you should know better than to still try to argue with me after all these months and years of trolling me. 😉

  4. Shortcut, to me, would imply that there was a harder way of talking to someone. We aren’t plagued with the problem of a rotary phone or a switch operator anymore; everything past 25 some odd years ago has been a “shortcut” of getting ahold of someone. I fail to see how this is a strong 1-word name for a brand that puts one person in contact with another or group of people as it’s been done before and this does not make the process any “shorter”, only different. Congrats to the seller and I hope they got some equity in the deal though (that might turn out to be worth more than the cash).

  5. I don’t agree with the new name being negative. As somebody who has never used project management software, the point of me switching to use it (from any company) would be to save time and money. It would be a “shortcut” to getting the project finished. That is exactly what any buyer of project management software wants, to get projects done faster and more efficiently.

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