Clubhouse has introduced Wave – a new feature that aims to increase small, private chats – and deeper engagements. Wave, is an invite mechanism meant to make it easier to start small closed chats on the social audio app.
According to Paul Davison, Clubhouse’s CEO and co-founder, “We strongly believe that small groups are as important as the broadcast service, as they complement each other. The most important networks tend to do both.”
More than 700,000 rooms are created every single day on Clubhouse. Many of these are the communal moments, like coming together to give flowers or stopping by a regular morning news show. But it’s often the smaller private moments amongst friends that put smiles on faces: birthdays, long-overdue catch-ups, watching a movie long-distance, making plans for the weekend, or just hanging out on a Thursday night.
How it works
To send a Wave, people can swipe right on the Hallway or tap the dots icon at the bottom left of the screen. Then tape the wave button next to the person they’d like to chat with. They’ll get a notification that you said hello and know that you’re open to chatting. If they are too, they can join a private room open just to the people waved at. The private rooms can be kept to one social circle, introduce friends from different groups to each other, or be opened up to make the room broad and accessible for everyone.
People can Wave at as many friends as they like, and they can do other things while waiting for them to respond. Explore the hallways, find more friends to wave at, or jump into some rooms. The tiny Wave bar will come along with you, in case people decide they can’t talk anymore and need to cancel your waves. And if you background the app, the waves are paused so you don’t get pulled into a room without realizing it.
Clubhouse has also announced the hire of Chelsea Macdonald as the live audio platform’s new head of entertainment partnerships. Macdonald will work with established and emerging talent, as well as streamers and studios, to develop their strategies on Clubhouse. Throughout her career, she has specialized in identifying up and coming talent and bringing them on to new platforms.
Speaking her new role, Macdonald said: “Clubhouse offers an immense opportunity for entertainers, filmmakers and writers to tell their own nuanced stories and authentically engage with audiences human to human. No hair, no makeup, no zoom…a Clubhouse room is the lightest lift on the entertainment publicity circuit and talent and/or distributor partners can host directly and build/own their own followings.”