How to Find the Best Clubhouse Meeting Rooms

On Clubhouse, there are no barriers to access anymore.

The once invite-only app has opened its doors to the world — for both iOS and Android. “While the [previous] restriction surely made testing easier for the developers, it also gave Clubhouse a sense of exclusivity bordering on pretentious, depending on which wealthy users you follow,” writes Jordan Minor. “That said, if you seek people, groups, and topics that genuinely interest you, Clubhouse fosters truly fascinating conversations.”

What types of conversations? And how do you find them?

“There is something for everyone on that app and it’s really about what you want to get out of it. And there could be more than one purpose. At any given moment, you can find rooms about Startups, Finance and Entrepreneurship as well as Love, Dating, Music and Spicy things too. For me, if I don’t care for something being discussed in a room, I simply leave,” writes Winy Bernard.

Jordan describes Clubhouse as: “What if Twitter was a podcast you lived inside of?” — so, how can you best curate your topics, relevant clubs, and schedule what you’re interested in? Let’s look at a few strategies…

The Best Clubhouse Meeting Rooms

Last week, we published a blog post about three of the best thought provoking podcasts. How does this relate, you ask? Some of the best Clubhouse meeting rooms follow similar formats as those podcasts: A panel of hosts that are particularly well informed about a specific topic often hold debates and discussions, learning from one another as well as presenting different perspectives for the audience to consider. Occasionally, they’ll bring up guest speakers from the audience, too.

“Every Saturday, Felicia Horowitz hosts what she calls a Virtual Dinner Party where she assembles a panel of really interesting and knowledgeable people around one topic. Her dinner parties attract some of the world’s greatest minds in the field of entertainment, science, technology, and more.”

And here’s something even cooler about Clubhouse: All of these interesting meeting rooms with experts are already happening in spatial audio.

What does that mean? As mentioned in the previous blog post, discussions in spatial audio will help immensely in understanding and identifying who is speaking. Spatial audio reduces cognitive load (it can be mentally taxing to try and decipher different voices that aren’t spatialized) and improves speech intelligibility.

But we’ll back up for a minute. If you’re just starting out on Clubhouse, how do you begin to find such meeting rooms in the first place?

Choose Interests 

Upon signing in, Clubhouse usually asks new users to pick topics they’re interested in. Its algorithm then recommends rooms based on these interests. To modify your interests, go to Profile > Settings > Interests. You’ll find hundreds of topics there, and can pick as many as you want.

For instance, interested in other thought provoking dinner conversations? “During a normal week, Leiti Hsu dedicates at least one night to hosting her Dream Dinner Party. She hops on Clubhouse to interview guests, describing the food and atmosphere of her fictitious party as a gateway into deep, emotional conversations,” writes Ashley Carman. When Hsu hosted a real life dinner party post-pandemic, she says: “What I have been astonished by is just speaking things into existence, and on Clubhouse, you can do it to hundreds or thousands of people. In real life, it takes a little bit of a different kind of effort to get 50 people in a room, but no matter what, it’s always speaking things into existence and [getting] the right people here, and their magic unfolds.”

Follow Experts

As you begin joining rooms and listening to people, be sure to follow those who are speaking about topics you’re interested in. Try clicking around on various users’ profiles and explore who they follow, too. If people regularly speak in any scheduled meeting rooms, they usually list it on their profile.

Arielle Pardes explains, “The main way to navigate Clubhouse is by following other people. Curating a quality list matters, because the app recommends rooms based on who you follow. Following the right people can open doors to new conversations. (Following the wrong people can lead to a deluge of useless push notifications.)”

So — here’s a little secret. When one software engineer, Vahe Hovhannisyan, became frustrated by only seeing rooms about bitcoin, he figured there must be a better way to find interesting conversationalists. What did he do?

“Hovhannisyan created his own database by looking at who Clubhouse’s founders, Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, were following. He identified some of Clubhouse’s power users, created a sample of 5,000 of them, pulled their following lists, and then from that pool generated a list of accounts that had millions of followers each. He published his list of the top 200 Clubhouse users on Read This Twice, a book recommendation website he runs,” writes Pardes.

However, even that list isn’t perfect. “Some of those people are, in fact, some of Clubhouse’s most prolific users, and ones that make for great follows. Horowitz [mentioned above, if you recall] is famous for her Saturday night ‘dinner parties,’ which regularly feature celebrity guests like MC Hammer and Oprah Winfrey… but others don’t have much presence at all. Jared Leto, for example, doesn’t have a Clubhouse bio, isn’t a member of any clubs, and uses a stack of pancakes as his avatar.” While pancakes are nice, they don’t necessarily indicate a quality discussion.

So what can you try next?

Find Clubs in Your Niche

In the upper left hand corner, you’ll see a compass looking icon, which is the “Explore” tab. Clicking on it will show you both people to follow as well as categories (“find conversations about…”), that when clicked on, will also list “clubs to follow”.

For example, let’s click on “Knowledge”. Some notable clubs that pop up are “Human Behaviour”, “PressClub”, and “Startup Club”. Once you click on a specific club, they usually have an “Up next” scheduled talk listed — if it looks interesting, click the alarm bell on the right to be notified when it begins. You can also join clubs to continue to be notified of their upcoming events.

Back on the main page of Clubhouse, you can also simply use the search bar at the top to look up your specific interest, and then it will list relevant people, clubs, rooms, and scheduled events.

Looking for clubs about comedy, live theatre, or musicals? Check out this blog post.

Enjoying Clubhouse Rooms in Spatial Audio

After spending some time curating your interests, following interesting people, and joining clubs you love, you’ll appreciate Clubhouse even more.

From the beginning, Clubhouse described conversations on their app as “being at a great dinner or cocktail party — where you hear amazing people all around you, with new people dropping in and out, and interesting ideas coming from all sides.” And that’s why spatial audio is so important. “It helps bring incredible rooms to life even more. When you're in the audience, you'll now hear the people around you in 3D, which makes the experience a bit more lifelike and human. It's also easier for your brain to track who is talking, thanks to subtle spatial cues. Spatial audio works best with headphones, wired or otherwise!”

Learn more about why and how Clubhouse integrated spatial audio in this blog post. (Hint — if you also have a social audio app, virtual events platform, or other native or web app… you can also easily integrate spatial audio!)

“The intonation, inflection and emotion conveyed through voice allow you to pick up on nuance and form uniquely human connections with others. You can still challenge each other and have tough conversations—but with voice there is often an ability to build more empathy,” shares Clubhouse in their very first blog post.

Audio is a special medium, indeed.