Clubhouse App: What Is It, What You Need to Know, and First Impressions
ALL ABOUT CLUBHOUSE
Now I will preface this with the fact that I am still new to Clubhouse, but I had a lot of questions going into it and while using it, but now I have a lot of answers! I’ll be addressing what the app is, some of the initial terms and aspects of the app, lingo to know, and my first impressions. I plan on making another post about my other takeaways from the app and what it’s good for, so be on the lookout for that. :)
I’ll admit, I’m posting this quick, but I wanted to document my experiences and first impression of Clubhouse. You can read more about Clubhouse and their Clubhouse Guide here. But for now, here’s the lowdown about the app:
WHAT IS IT?
Clubhouse is an invitation-only, audio-chat social networking platform. Launched in the spring of 2020, it’s a place for ‘rooms’ or casual conversations that you can hop in and out of. It’s an app that encourages exploring different conversations and communities, while creating a space to meet old and new friends from all over the world and have an open dialogue. It features a variety of clubs and virtual rooms that foster conversations about anything and everything. You can find conversations about Life (traveling, relationships, dating, pregnancy); faith; tech, arts, languages, entertainment, places, identity, entrepreneurship, and more. Because of the breadth of the conversations, you can actively learn, listen, ask questions, debate, and have discussions about many different topics.
It utilizes voice as a new medium for social media, providing a new kind of relationship that people can have with others.
The HALLWAY or LOBBY
Is where you see all the live rooms based on people and clubs you follow. Imagine you’re in a hallway and are walking past each door, trying to figure out what each conversation is. These conversations are simultaneous, but they are tailored to who you follow and the Clubs you are in or follow. When you enter a chat, you are free to browse other chats in-app. It’s easy to drop-in and drop-out, without worrying about announcing your departure. The hallway not only displays all the rooms available to you, but also shows a top menu bar that consists of your invites, a calendar of scheduled events/conversations, notifications, and your profile icon.
The ROOM
A room is the main part of the Clubhouse app. This is where all the conversations happen. Rooms are available to you as you follow certain interests, clubs, and people. They will list the name of the host club (notice the green house icon), the name of the room (aka the topic), and it will also show a possible listing and count of speakers and audience members. When you first enter a room, you will notice the people in the room are divided. At the top are the people on the Stage (actively speaking) and those in the audience (just listening). You will learn more about the different roles people play in the room, later in this post! You are highly encouraged to drop-in and drop-out of rooms, as you are free to browse whatever topics interest you. This is essentially where you can become an active participant in the conversation and “raise your hand” in the app to be given the chance to chime in.
WHAT IS A CLUB?
A club is a private community that share similar interests, like that of a FB group. club is kind of like a private community (similar to a FB group). They can be about common interests and hobbies, shared identities, shared goals, and more. You can be a member of a club, or just follow the club. When you’re first browsing clubs, you’re going to “follow” the club. Eventually (or hopefully), you’ll be asked to become a member of the club. The admin(s) of the group will accept/deny people into the club, just like an admin would for a FB group. You don’t have to answer any questions or anything, but you should follow the admin(s) profiles to confirm your interest, as that is something they may be looking for when going through the approval list. Ultimately, your membership is decided by the admins, but you can still follow any club to be notified of any conversations happening! There’s more opportunity to reach more people if you’re a member of a larger club.
On a person’s profile, you may notice it says ‘Member of’ and then a series of icons below. Those are the clubs that that person is part of. Click them to see what kind of communities they are a part of. For example, I’m a member of Fashion Talk 101, 1:100 Architecture Podcast Club, Empire State of Mind, Women in Arts & Entertainment, Women Architects Collective, and Asian Hustle Network. I' follow other clubs, but have not been admitted.
If you want to start your own Club, you’ll have to fill out the form here.
I still don’t get it? It’s like a conference.
In other words, think of it as a conference, kind of. Conferences are a place that helps facilitate a bunch of different kinds of conversations. The conference will host the main keynote speakers and then breakout sessions. You’re going to notice the much larger conversations that are gaining a lot of traction. They’ll be hosted by more “popular” people or be about very popular topics. People may default to these conversations because they are trendy conversations or hosted by a well-known personality, like how everyone attends the keynote of an event. They may be less interactive due to the sheer volume of people watching/listening. Besides the keynote, there are breakout sessions — much smaller, but more personable sessions. Because they are smaller, they tend to be more participatory. However, the large takeaway from conferences aren’t just the valuable information from the keynote speaker and breakout sessions, but the networking and side conversations you have with people in-between. The hallways of the conference or convention are where these relationships and introductions happen, so you are encouraged to follow and get to know other people outside of the conversations. The great thing about Clubhouse is that you can change up your interests and the conversations you listen to, so it gives much more flexibility than a conference would though.
IS IT SAFE?
Like any social media platform, interacting with a bunch of strangers can sometimes get dicey. When you use Clubhouse, you agree to abide by the rules of the application. Your @username doesn’t have to be your name, but you should be using your actual name as your display name. You must be at least 18 years of age. As of right now, there are no monetization options on the app, so there is no means of selling products in-app, but you can place direct links to your social media or personal website in your profile. I know the developers are thinking of ways of adding a “tipping” feature to Club hosts and whatnot.
Content moderation is at the discretion of the Room moderators, as they can decide who is in a room and can speak. As mentioned before, they can accept or reject speakers, mute or remove speakers, and remove someone from a room. You can decide who to follow and unfollow and you also have the option to block any user at any time.
This the screen I received when I downloaded the app and picked a username to reserve. I didn’t realize I needed to be invited officially!
At the top, you will be given a few suggested people to follow. On this page, you can also browse the many different genres of conversations you can join in on.
Once I started following people and clubs, conversations started showing up on my home page, or in the “hallway”. Here I can browse all the active discussions.
ROLES
MODERATOR
When you start a room, you are the automatic Moderator. As a moderator, you are in charge of curating the people involved and having a say in the direction of the conversation. You can add or remove other speakers. Commanding the room as a moderator isn’t a skill that comes naturally to people. It’s a learned skill. As a mod, you can move people up and down, remove people. Like any conversation, you won’t always vibe with everyone and you may notice that not everyone is contributing to the conversation in a respectful and thoughtful way. It’s important to take into account the diverse set of perspectives and you should be thoughtful of who you bring up. Look for people unmuting, this is an indicator on who to call on next. Don’t be shy about moving people back down to the audience. Moderators are indicated by the green icon that showed adjacent to the profile pic.
SPEAKER
Speakers are the people in the room who have the ability to talk in the conversation. By default, when you join a room, you will be a Listener, but if you are invited or ask to be on stage, then you will become a Speaker. Speakers are when you have something to contribute to the conversation. Often, Speakers will start by doing a short introduction of themselves, thank the Speaker or Mods for facilitating the conversation or bringing up a good point, and then insert their own opinion, anecdote, question, or whatever. It’s important you introduce yourself when you’re speaking for the first time, especially in much larger rooms where there’s a lot of names on stage. The Mods and audience may not notice who’s speaking immediately if they don’t call on your personally, so by giving yourself a name to a voice to a face, people can click on your profile and check you out. As a Speaker, it’s all pertinent to be mindful of each other, which means letting others talk (“sharing the stage”), as well as know when to mute and unmute. No one enjoys hearing unnecessary background noise (You might hear “One mic, one mic!” when too many people have their mics on).
LISTENER
A listener is simply just someone who joins in on an existing conversation. You’re immediately put on mute and are placed in the bottom section of the Room, as “Others in the room” aka as part of the audience. This is the most passive role in the conversation as you have no obligation to speak. You can sit back and relax and listen to the conversation and choose how passive you want to be. In some rooms (especially smaller ones or if the Speaker or Mod recognizes you), you may be invited to speak, but you don’t have to accept. They understand you might not want to talk or are busy doing other things. If you do want to speak on your own accord, you can raise your hand on the app and the moderator might let you on stage to have a turn. Don’t be offended if they can’t get to you, because sometimes there are simply just too many people and they want to be able to control how many people are up on stage. Sometimes you’ll notice, “Hand raising was turned off by the moderator,” in an effort to manage the stage. Otherwise, as a listener, enjoy the conversation, browse people’s profiles, browse other rooms, multitask between the Clubhouse conversation and your work, chores, hobbies, etc.
ROOM ORGANIZATION
When you join a conversation, you will notice the room will be organized a certain way. At the top of the page are the Speakers and the Stage. The top portion consists of the Speakers and Moderators. Like I said earlier, the green icon that appears next to some profile icons means they are Moderators. Then you have the ‘Followed by the Speakers’ section and then you have ‘Others in the room’, which are all the listeners, like you! This helps organize who are actively speaking, who are some profiles you may want to check out because the Speakers follow them too, and everyone else in the audience.
This was the beginning of the conversation and it started off pretty small, but grew over time.
This room grew exponentially and more people were enabled as Moderators to help manage the crowd.
This room was meme-central and shows that you can have joking conversations with strangers too.
As you can see above, there are a plethora of discussions you can join in on and see how they fit your interests. Some rooms are larger than others, while others much more intimate. Some are more serious than others, some are just a running joke. They can be about specific topics, trendy items, or general discussion about anything. Note that I also listened in at very different times of the day. From a post-lunch discussion to even a pre-bedtime wind down.
LINGO & OTHER THINGS TO KNOW
PING - “Pinging someone” means to reach out to someone on the app and send a notification that you started a room or want them involved in the conversation you’re listening to. To “ping” someone is to click the + icon on the bottom of the screen and choosing to ping someone that follows you. If you think your friend could really benefit from this talk or it’s of their interest, you can ping/notify them.
RESET THE ROOM - You may hear Moderators say they will “Reset the room,” this means they are re-introducing and reiterating the topic at-hand, possibly reintroducing the hosts and specialists featured, and plugging to follow the Club and/or similar conversations. They can also bring the conversation back to the main topic, especially if they got sidetracked with everyone’s contributions. By resetting the room, they are familiarizing new people to the conversation who may have joined in the middle of it all.
PTR or PULL TO REFRESH, or Refresh the Room - Swipe down on your screen to reload the room. This will refresh the current room and show any changes to the Moderators or new Speakers on stage. Often the Speakers can change as people say their two cents and then leave.
The Clubhouse App is currently only available on iPhone. Sorry!
The party hat icon that shows up next to your profile picture is an indicator that you’re new to the app! The icon goes away after 7 days.
When you first join, you are given two invites you can use to invite others to the app. Through their algorithms, you may be given more invites to distribute, if you host conversations, and expand your social outreach within the app itself. If someone doesn’t respond to your invite, you can’t retract it.
Clubhouse does not have a DM (direct message) feature, so if you want to message someone, you’ll have to contact them through their social media (if provided on their profile).
There is a Clubhouse Town Hall every Sunday, every 12pm or 12:00 EST
There is a New Member Orientation every Wednesday 9pm or 21:00 EST
MY FIRST IMPRESSIONS
It was daunting at first.
I saw a few mutuals talk about it on Instagram. I heard of audio chat based apps, but never ventured out to use one. I figured if I wanted to listen to something, I could just put on a podcast or something, but this was different. When I first signed up, I didn’t realize that I was just reserving a username. I needed to be invited to use the app. I was lucky enough to talk about it with a friend who was on the app and she sent me an invite. I was immediately “accepted”. Am I in the cool club now?
I found myself aimlessly browsing the app following people and clubs that seemed of moderate interest to me, just to get the ball rolling. I recognized a few names that were my actual friends, but I also noticed a bunch of people that I recognized as either celebrities, influencers, YouTubers, etc. I was able to select what kinds of topics I was also interested in, which varied from beauty and lifestyle, travel, Asian representation, social media and influencers, financial independence, and more.
When I finally got around to joining and room and seeing what the conversations were like, it sometimes felt invasive. Like any natural conversation, especially that with a bunch of strangers, it feels weird to join in the middle of a conversation or start talking with someone new. Additionally, there are many niches and communities that are going to be unfamiliar with you. Because of the unfamiliarity, it felt intrusive sometimes to join a conversation that I had no expertise, knowledge, or experience in, but I was here to learn.
My first Room was interesting and I was able to see the discussion evolve over a topic. After an hour-long discussion, someone that was on stage was very dissatisfied with the direction of the conversation and expressed their discontent in a rather abrupt and disrespectful way to the ‘expert’ in the Room. The moderator had to provide the spiel of “remaining respectful and opting to leave quietly” if they no longer vibed with the conversation. It was kind of strange to hear the “drama” first hand. I almost wanted to leave the virtual room! But in the end, it’s no surprise because conversations bring all types of perspectives and people will butt heads, so of course a conversation needs to be moderated. Regardless, I thought the conversation overall was fruitful and I started to see how this could translate to many other topics across the platform. People were coming from all over to talk about XYZ. People had questions. People had answers. People had a discussion. And I was able to chime in if I really wanted to.
Something I immediately noticed with Clubhouse was that the audio of the app did not conflict or override the audio of other apps I was using. This meant that I could actively listen to conversations, but mindlessly scroll through my other social media apps and simultaneously watch AND LISTEN to the audio of that app. I didn’t have to pause one thing over the other, nor did my apps have to readjust and figure out what audio to play. I could listen to the conversations being held, but still enjoy my IG reels or Twitter memes without skipping a beat. I was even able to play YouTube and Spotify at the same time. This is perfect for multitasking. This might not be a big deal to you, but I thought it was kind of nice being able to overlap audio, as I passively listened and continued to scroll my other apps on my phone.
I was also impressed by how much people used Clubhouse to network and expand their circles. People utilized their profiles/bios, like I have never seen before and because there was no DM feature, if people really wanted to see more about you, they had to visit your Twitter or Instagram. You can be as passive or participatory as you want on this app, so for some, being able to market themselves and network was a big deal. The hustle game can be very strong on here.
Overall, it’s been an interesting time on the app so far. You truly have access to new ideas and new people that you wouldn’t necessarily have on other social media platforms. Being able to have a much more fluid dialogue with strangers is definitely why this app seems to be blowing up in popularity. I read and even was in a Room that discussed if Clubhouse was just all hype or the next big thing. I don’t think it’s necessarily here to replace anything else. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., all have their place. Because it’s not a visual based application, nor are we uploading or archiving information, photos, etc., it makes Clubhouse a little bit different. The social sphere can be open for another app and we can see how we, as users, can make the most out of it. I haven’t been on the app for long, so I’m interested in seeing where it takes me.
If you end up on Clubhouse, follow me @elainegamolo :)
