Guys, I wasn’t sure about this Clubhouse thing, but I am telling you - its the most exciting thing to come out of the pandemic. I am now obsessed. Ready Player One is getting closer and closer to being our actual lives. I was reluctant to join and not at all interested at first, because someone described it as “Its like Facebook but audio”…the last thing I need is another Facebook (I spend way too much time on it) and I like seeing the photos and posts, so why would I want it in audible form? That idea just made me cringe. Whoever described Clubhouse like that is just dead wrong. Here is my attempt to explain it to everyone and convince you to join.

What is Clubhouse?

Trying to describe Clubhouse is like trying to describe the universe, because it is a world of infinite possibilities. But here goes …. Imagine thousands of Ted Talks taking place at once on infinite topics, all on one app on your phone. You can go in and out of rooms quietly and “sit in the audience” and listen and learn for a while from the experts who are on the “stage” Some of the speakers on stage are very famous names, like Will.I.am or Mark Zuckerberg, while others are less famous but still smart and qualified!

How does it work?

1) You need to be invited, so next time someone is offering an invitation on FB, say “yes”!

2) Download the app.

3) Create a profile. Your profile is simply your name (real names encouraged), your photo, and if you want, a bio. Here is mine. Pretty sparse. I don’t have many followers and I am still adding people I follow. I fully intend to follow hundreds of people.

Here is a profile of my friend, Kimberly, with a bit more experience on Clubhouse. If I follow Kimberly I will know when she has started a room and if I click on the bell by her name, I will get notifications of when she starts a room. Follow her, because she is involved in a ton of cool stuff!

Here is a profile of someone who is quite “big” on Clubhouse. I am following her out of curiosity.

Once you join and create your profile you are ready to go into Rooms and join Clubs. Rooms are started by speakers who think they have something of interest to others. The rooms are open to anyone! Speakers are on a stage, but there is no video. Only audio. You can see their icon (photo of your face) and you know they are room moderators by the little green mark next to their icon. For example, Kimberly might start a room about wine pairing, or about wines from a certain region. She would invite other qualified speakers to join her on the stage to talk about wine and food….maybe some wine producers, a sommelier, and a chef. The rest of us are in the audience and we are muted. If I want, I can raise my hand and the moderator could invite me to the stage if I have something to add to the conversation. Now imagine rooms are happening simultaneously on any topic you can possibly imagine, for example, finance, health, music, art, investing, cooking, meditation just to name a few. You can leave a room at any time and enter a room at any time. Here is an example of a few rooms that showed up in my feed based on my interests. Some have thousands of people listening in the audience, some have just a handful. If you want to improve your language skills, you can find rooms in any language!

Here is what a room looks like when you enter….on top are the speakers on stage, then come some followers of the speakers, and then come all of us, the audience….It is so easy to drop in and out of a room!

Why Clubhouse is the most amazing thing to happen in the pandemic…

I truly believe we will look back on 2020 and 2021 as a kind of renaissance. Despite the bad news, we will look at this period as a start of new creative outlets, new ways of life, and a time that allowed humanity to re-set and pivot. Clubhouse is one of these mega forces of creativity and democracy that will come out of this dark time. Clubhouse democratizes information and ideas more than any platform. More than Twitter, more than YouTube … trust me, you do not want to be late getting onto this boat! Since I joined Clubhouse (only 24 hours ago!) I have been in rooms where I learned about NFTs -a big topic in Clubhouse. (Anyone want to buy this blog post? Ha ha ha. Just kidding, but seriously, anyone?) I was in a room hosted by black speakers, discussing United States vs. Billie Holiday. Then, I was in a room that was simply a room devoted to allowing everyone 30 seconds to tell the audience about a Club they formed (in Clubhouse), and I was in a room where the speakers were giving free advice to people who want to grow their IG or TikTok audience. My favorite room is the 5min News room, where they talk about headlines for only 5 minutes a topic. You get the headline and the analysis and then they move on to another topic. There are rooms for DJs just playing music, and there are rooms for comedians, actors, yogis, and more. I could go on and on, but I think this is enough to get you started! Now, go find a room!!!!

How to get the most out of Clubhouse

My final advice….join as many clubs and follow as many people as you can. The best way you can find rooms is to follow people and join clubs. The more people you follow, the more you can learn! This is university for all…and I can’t wait to keep learning!