You Tell Us: Feature Focus – Social Rooms
Ideas of Possible Changes to make the rooms simpler…
- Change from people who the moderator(s) follows can enter the room to co-following of the speakers can enter the room.
- Switch to No Moderator Status in the room
- No Audience Section – Everyone is on the stage area.
- When you wave should it start as an open room and you can shut it down?
Responses Summary of the LIVE Feedback during the room.
- Followed by speakers – Option not a default was the main response… Like the idea of not having an audience – but not everyone liked the idea of joining the stage automatically.
- Being on Stage automatically – about 50/50
- No Mods – many supported that? Who is going to deal with if something that happens – and some social rooms may need a moderator…
- Choose to Lock the room? – this was not really responded to in the summary…
“What is the balance between simple vs configurable”
Lexi in Town Hall… such a great question for all of us to be asking really!
My thoughts: Originally the app started out as one large room. A group of friends hanging out together. This brings a whole different dynamic for sure. I have to wonder if this is not the main reason behind these shifts in thinking around the make up of the Social Rooms.
Watch for rooms around this topic – I do believe it is one that may need a bit more discussion.
First App Icon for 2022 – Francesca Hogi – the creator of the True Love Society, focuses on love and relationships in all forms. Many that show up regularly to Franny’s rooms, know them as a healing place of vulnerability, show their hearts and find support in an incredible community of peole who are seeking something great in their emotional life! (excerpted from the iOS release notes of February 1st within the app.
Highlights
Fun rooms celebrating people’s anniversaries with the red balloons 🎈 watch for these…
The Emoji’s in honour of Black History Month are 🖤 & ✊🏾 started showing up on the 31st of January. It was not launched officially in the Clubhouse TownHall however many are using these to show solidarity and love to honour the black community and Black History month.
Here are a couple of the clubs and happenings around Clubhouse that were highlighted this week in the Town Hall!
https://www.clubhouse.com/club/our-mindset
https://www.clubhouse.com/club/filmingwhileblack
Three Black Women Creators on the App were featured on the App Store with an article about Black History Month which is being celebrated on Clubhouse –
To find these women’s bios. You can put their handle into this simple formula to find them on Clubhouse. A small portion of our bios is public and available to be seen by anyone this way.
Listen to the replay to hear comments from each of these ladies about what it has meant for them to be honoured in the story on the Apple App Store front page!
Enter: https://www.clubhouse.com/@____________ and fill in the blank with the handle the user has chosen. Mine is @beboldyou so it would look like this https://www.clubhouse.com/@beboldyou
You can see more by going to the REPLAY of the Town Hall Here on web-listening or in the app!
Product Updates
Last Week’s Releases
For Android Clips are now working on Live Rooms
New Explore page – tailored for new folks in the app – the best thing to make your hallway better is to follow more people and clubs…
Ability to change your phone number on iOS – have your email authenticated first to do this.
Back Channel faster now also on the iOS – this update was already out for the Android users.
Coming In This Week’s Product Updates
Steady improvements “under the hood” continue to be released. If you have an update and there are no release notes to let you know what is new then likely these are under the hood fixes and updates.
iOS will have the New Room Composer this week. This is found in the Hallway using the Green Start A Room button. You will be able to set them up at the same time before they open the room. Many creators have found it is hard to do all the things when you open the room as folks are coming into the room.
Clips on Android for replays will also be released this week.
Phone number changes for Android will be released this week also…
Bigger stuff coming up soon! Keep your eyes peeled.
Top 10 Q&A’s
Q. “Is it possible to make a function where you can exclude rooms not in your language or from your country?”
A. “You can go to your settings so tap on your profile, then tap on the gear icon and there is a setting that allows you to select the language that you want to see.” “With the new room composer, we we also make it easier for people when they start rooms to specify what language this room is in.”
Q. “When I set up a room in my club and ping people in they seem to automatically come up onto my stage without me having invited them. Why does this happen?”
A. “There are a couple situations where people can join a stage automatically. One is if they are hosts of the room, like if it’s an event and they’re listed as a host. They’ll come up on stage automatically.”
AND…
“If you’re the first person to tap on a room start notice you will get put in as the speaker if you’re friends with the speaker.” This is nice per Paul as it is a simple way to start the conversation in the room with someone I want to talk with. This will always be a mutual following person, (you will both follow one another) So in essence you have opted in to say you want to talk with the person you are following. Anyone coming in after that first conversation happens will come in at the audience level unless they have been added to the calendar listing. Which is up to 13 people in addition to the creator of the event. Note: it is the conversation with a person which triggers that the room has started and sends out notifications beyond mutual followers. So, this is something that you can welcome!
Q. “I want to receive notifications when rooms I’m interested in start without also being notified every time someone I follow speaks. I’ve had to turn off or figure out how to change my notifications to solve this issue.”
A. “I think that would be a good thing to add in the notification settings. So I know the team is listening in to this stuff right now the team that works on notifications, so maybe that’s something that we could add in an upcoming release. That feels pretty reasonable.”
Q. “Is it possible to share a document or a JPEG for example to a group specifically, I’d love to share an E card for example to everyone in my group and would rather be able to post it to the group specifically and not to an entire room.” This question was rephrased and answered by Paul as follows: “So basically, can I share links in DMS more easily?”
A. “Images and DMS definitely on our radar. And and we don’t have an exact time for it. It’s not like in the next couple of weeks, but we know that’s a big, it’s a big need. And it’s something that we plan to add, you know, hopefully in the next few months.”
NOTE: While it is exciting that there is going to be upgrades to the DMs Back Channel and possibly even a coming Chat feature for those in the room, it still seems that part of the original question above was missed. Which is the ability to attach or send a particular item to a group of people or a Club. So wonder if it would be possible to have a members only chat that would go out to the active club members that are in the room at any given moment? My thoughts around this is if they are able to limit the hand raise ability to Club Members only they are already gathering the data of those in the room and if they are in the club… so, it seems they could use that information to allow for a group to be created automatically that would receive a message that is sent only to Club Members in the room… I will be putting this in as a feature request here… If you have ideas for new or updates to the features of the Clubhouse App please do send your questions in via Submit a Question for Town Hall Link here or on the bottom of the Clubhouse.com page.
Q. “Is there an archive where all of the club replays are accessible?”
A. “f you go to a clubs page, you’ll see all of the replays on that page. And that and then like, if you go a couple other things, if you go to someone’s profile, you’ll see all the replays in which they were a speaker. And if you go to your own profile, you can tap on the little replay bookmark icon at the top, and it’ll show you your saved replays. So these are any ones where you hit save, or where you tap the bell on the event ahead of time. Those are the main services right now. If it’s something else, it’s not currently available.”
Q. “So, what is the process for swapping phone numbers on my account?”
A. “Go to your profile, then tap into the settings, the little gear icon at the top. And then if you tap on your name, in your settings, you can see your phone number then if you tap on the phone number, you can change it there. I think I might be correct me if I’m wrong, and you have to have your email authenticated in order to do the phone update.”
Q. “Would it be possible to implement the option to leave a comment when we send a tip to someone?”
A. “We kicked off a big meeting on monetisation stuff this past week and it’s an area that we’re really going to be investing in this year. And all of the the way that feedback and monetisation works needs an overhaul. So we will take that into account when we’re designing it. So more stay tuned, more to come.”
Q. “I hope there’d be a way to react to a conversation in the room with specific actions like thumbs up like clapping hands, etc. That the moderators can differentiate between a motion to speak or just clapping when someone is flashing their mic.”
A. “Yeah, feedbacks another thing we’re working on over the next couple of months. So totally on our radar, and totally stuff we’re working on and stay tuned.”
Q. “Is it okay to foster our club members to use their room recorded audios, for example, to produce a professional podcast. Is it possible or I guess isn’t allowed to share this on other platforms?”
A. “Yeah, 100% do that. That’s awesome. It’s your content. If you do the replay. You can do whatever you like with it. And you can go to your profile on the replay and you can download it you can post it far and wide.”
Q. “Could you please consider adding the feature that the picture of the person who is a clubhouse icon is next to the Explore button? That way we’d be able to click on this and read about the person.
A. This is listed in the release notes on the date that the new icon has been added to the update in the app store. You can read about this in the What’s New Release Notes: “the best way to find it is if you go to your settings and you tap on what’s new, we put stuff in the release notes each time and if we have a blog post will link out to that. I think that’s really cool idea to make it more prominent. We we don’t have any plans to do that. But but it has been something that people have requested before and I think it’d be really fun.”
Trivia Question: Who was the first app icon?
A. Steph Simon – who was NOT working for Clubhouse at the time but now she is. So, if you want to work for Clubhouse go and check out their job postings on their website.
Reviewing the You Tell Us Question:
“The last question for today is where we’ve gotten a lot of feedback about social rooms. People love them or trying to make them simpler and respond to some of people’s feedback on it.
Some of the stuff we’ve been contemplating is 1. letting any friends of the speakers join instead of those the moderator(s) are following. CO-follows instead of follows of the mods. It’s kind of simpler and easier to understand. 2. Having it be more like everyone’s a speaker, you can move yourself to the audience, but by default, everyone’s a speaker. 3. Getting rid of mods because mods add a lot of weight to the room and it is kind of stressful to figure out who’s going to be the mod. Thought are around it being more like friends hanging out and people can come and go as they please. 4. Should we start waving rooms private and allow you to open them to social or should we default them to social but you can choose to lock them before they become social, open rooms?
If you have thoughts around these items please send it in to the team at Clubhouse via a Feedback or Ask a Question Form. You can find these through the Contact Us Link on the Clubhouse.com page.
Speaking of Contact if you want to connect with me to ask any questions go on to this website’s Contact Page Here