With the ongoing pandemic, we all are forced to connect with our loved ones through virtual services like Meet, Teams, Zoom, and more. While these services offer great features they also pose restrictions on how long you can converse with someone. But do you know what does not have restrictions? Clubhouse!

You can use Clubhouse to audio chat with your loved ones for however long you with! You will also get the ability to invite all your friends and family and moderate them according to your needs. But Clubhouse doesn’t have a group calling option, does it? Let’s find out!

How to make group calls on Clubhouse

Well, technically you won’t be making a group call but rather hosting a closed room where you can invite your loved ones. This will essentially work like a group call where no one else from the community will be able to join your room. Let’s take a quick look at the procedure. 

Note: Everyone you need to chat with will need to have signed up to Clubhouse. This can be easily achieved if one of you has a pending invite. Each new user gets 2 invites which essentially will allow you to create a chain of invites to get everyone registered on Clubhouse. 

Open Clubhouse and tap on ‘Start a room’ at the bottom of your screen.

Tap on ‘Closed’.

Now tap on ‘+ Add a Topic’.

Enter a subject for your current room and tap on  ‘Set Topic’ once you are done.

Now tap on ‘Choose People…’.

Select the invitees for your group audio chat.

Tap on ‘Let’s Go’ once you are done.

The invite for the closed room will now be sent to all the people selected by you, and you should now be able to group audio chat with them indefinitely. 

Can I add people who are not my followers?

No, people that are not following you can only join ‘Open’ and ‘Social’ rooms. This means that they can not be invited to private group chats. This is a privacy-focused feature to ensure that no unwanted users can join in on your group chat. 

If you want someone in your group call, then you need to ask them to follow you. You will need to contact them and tell them so — you can do so on any other social network that is mention on their Clubhouse profile as you cannot DM on Clubhouse.

How to add people to an ongoing group audio chat

Only a moderator can invite new people to an ongoing closed room. If you are the moderator, then follow the guide below to invite someone to your ongoing chat. 

In the closed room, tap on the ‘+’ in the bottom right beside the ‘mic’ icon.

Now tap on the person you wish to invite to your closed room.

And that’s it! An invite as a notification for the same will now be automatically sent to the concerned person. 

How can I know if someone has joined my group audio chat?

You will get a notification each time a new user joins your current closed room, however, these can be easily missed mid-conversations. You can use the search function in such cases to verify if a user has joined in or not. 

In the closed room, tap on the ‘3-dot’ menu icon in the top right corner.

Now tap on ‘Search Room’.

Type in the concerned person’s name in the search bar at the top.

Now if they show up in the search results it means that they have joined in, if not, then you can always ping them again using the invite guide above.

Why use Clubhouse for group calls?

Clubhouse gives you more than a few advantages when compared to other group audio chat platforms. Let’s take a quick look at some of them. 

  • Easy Sign – Up process. 
  • Ability to host closed rooms and moderate users at your will. 
  • Ability to mute participants. 
  •  No time limit on conversations. 
  • Attendees can be added or removed at any time during the chat. 
  • Ability to host exclusively dedicated rooms for certain topics. 
  • Exclusivity. 

Things to know when using Clubhouse for group audio calls

  • Your profile is publicly visible to all your contacts. 
  • Everyone on Clubhouse can see your followers, who you follow, and your connected social accounts. 
  • If you signed up using your phone number, anyone with that number can find you on Clubhouse. 

 You should keep these things in mind if you are trying to host a private room. Though your room will be private, your profiles and public details won’t be. There have been reports of a few privacy incursions due to these issues, mainly through past phone numbers. You should keep these factors in mind as even if you use an alias on Clubhouse, the person with your phone number will be able to find that alias. 

We hope this post helped you get familiar with hosting group audio chats in Clubhouse. Do you think it’s a viable alternative? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

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