Interest around fledgling social media platform, Clubhouse, has been ramping up over the last couple of months. When even Elon Musk is hosting stuff on there, this is not a surprise. But what is Clubhouse and how does it (and invites) actually work?
What is Clubhouse?
Clubhouse is an audio-based social media platform that went live in May 2020. It essentially attempts to mimic real life conversations, like in a clubhouse setting, but online.
Networking and collaboration is a big focus of the app.
How does it work?
The conversations themselves take place in rooms – these can be open or private. So you can stumble upon an interesting conversation or keep things between a small group of trusted individuals.
Within these rooms there are roles – moderator, speaker or listener. Listeners can also digitally raise a hand to ask a question of the speakers.
This has made Clubhouse a good choice for things like talks and virtual fireside chats, as well as a place to simply chat to friends.
Perhaps most interesting is that the audio from conversations are not to be saved. There are also rules against recording or sharing the conversations.
“You may not transcribe, record, or otherwise reproduce and/or share information obtained in Clubhouse without prior permission,” the platform’s guidelines read.
However, Clubhouse itself does record the conversations for “the purpose of supporting incident investigations.” But it’s temporary.
“…we temporarily record the audio in a room while the room is live. If a user reports a Trust and Safety violation while the room is active, we retain the audio for the purposes of investigating the incident, and then delete it when the investigation is complete. If no incident is reported in a room, we delete the temporary audio recording when the room ends. Audio from (i) muted speakers and (ii) audience members is never captured, and all temporary audio recordings are encrypted.”
The platform reportedly had moderation issues in 2020 so perhaps this is to help curb that.
There are already quite a few celebrities on the platform, including Oprah, Jared Leto and of course, Elon Musk.
The Tesla CEO even tweeted early on Monday morning about a Clubhouse chat he was doing with Sriram Krishnan, Marc Andreessen, Steven Sinofsky, Aarthi Ramamurthy and Garry Tan.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 31, 2021
It also seems to be popular with Silicon Valley tech start ups and entrepreneurs.
You can read the full list of guidelines, rules and other general info here.
What platforms is it on?
Just in case you weren’t already ultra-aware that it’s primarily used by rich and famous people — it’s only available on iOS devices.
How do I get a Clubhouse invite?
And the moment it’s invite-only. This means that a current member has to invite you — much like Facebook back in the day.
So if you know someone with Clubhouse, hit them up for the hook up. Or maybe try begging strangers on main by using #clubhouse.
If, like me, you’re not cool enough to be on there yet, you can still reserve your user name of choice. Simply download the app, pick your handle and it will be saved for you.
According to Entrepreneur, doing this might also score you an invite. It has reported that if you have friends on Clubhouse and reserve your handle, they may get a notification and be able to send you an invite. However, it will depend on their notification settings.
Deleting your account
If you do get an invite, sign up and decide it’s not for you… we have some news. You can’t simply delete your account from the app, you have to email Clubhouse. We have the full story here.