Thread by @Nica

Today's @joinClubhouse Townhall recap thread starts here!

Creator First accelerator programme closed, received more than 5k applications, which are being reviewed now. More info on timings on next week's Townhall. #clubhousetownhall

World Tour - Brazil edition happened this week. #clubhousetownhall

Head of Policy appointed to the team. Responsibilities include internal and external policy issues. #clubhousetownhall

Pseudonyms: Clubhouse is a real identity service in general, and it is important to know who you are talking to. "Persistent reputation that you care about is important. But there are nuances and details we need to work through." #clubhousetownhall

"There are often good reasons to use a name different to your birth name; we want to make sure we're being thoughtful about that. TOS now says real identity but exceptions are made on case-by-case basis. We will be clarifying policy in the coming weeks." #clubhousetownhall

"We are listening to that and making changes to that policy in the coming week." #clubhousetownhall

Recording and transcription: not currently allowed unless with express permission of creator and speakers. "When we say creator first, we mean creator control - they can record with permission of speakers, and best practice is to add RECORDING to the name of the room."

"We will update the policy to make it clear that by default conversations in CH are open to people in the room and it is OK to paraphrase something that was said, and to quote stuff. To do something completely off the record, use the privacy options available." #clubhousetownhall

"Use club rules to host private conversations, or you can block people who share information you didn't want shared. We want to empower you as moderators and club founders to set the rules, as long as they don't violate guidelines." #clubhousetownhall

Releases: no release shipped in the past week. "Working to get it out there as fast as we can. Next release after that focused on club admin, making it easier to display events in club and other features." #clubhousetownhall

"We may ship a third update in the interim with features that have been highly requested and/or are highly useful in the next couple of days - really top of mind for us, although no control over approval times." #clubhousetownhall

Q&A portion starting now! #clubhousetownhall

Feed logic: only based on users I follow or also trending/popular conversations? "Primarily based on who you follow and clubs you're part of. I think we should show other rooms in your feed that may be interesting to you - we should help." #clubhousetownhall

"Follows of follows (extended network) rooms are also shown. But we think there's a lot more we can do to show you interesting rooms - there is no current link between topics and rooms, for example." #clubhousetownhall

"We should get better at that, also to figure out whether a room is really interesting and retention is super high; or if a lot of your friends are in the audience of a room. I'd love to have some editorial aspects to include featured rooms too." #clubhousetownhall

Muting words/topics: can we get a feature to do that? "That's a good idea. We have grown really quickly, so things like room search, language filtering and muting make sense, but we haven't built them yet and they aren't on the current roadmap." #clubhousetownhall

Serendipity/meeting new people: "Discovery is such a big part of the CH experience. As we grow we need to have ways to ensure that continues, building things in the ranking algorithms to show you rooms and people outside of your follow graph." #clubhousetownhall

"Also new ways to find out people who may be interesting to you. We often talk about 'scaling intimacy' - the connection is what the experience is about. A bad outcome is when it turns into a live podcast, and it feels sterile and non-participatory." #clubhousetownhall

"We really want to encourage people to host more small rooms, and often that is where the serendipity happens, you can talk to people and build those connections." #clubhousetownhall

Room context beyond the title (calendar description, or small reset recording): "Event description should be available - that's a no-brainer to us. A 15s clip would be cool, but we need to make sure it is still relevant to the room if it evolves." #clubhousetownhall

Accidentally moving people back to the audience as a mod - any ways to prevent that? "Don't make everyone a mod!" #clubhousetownhall

"There is no benefit to making everyone a mod; it is helpful to pin people to the top, but that's it. If you need help moving people up and down, then fine, but otherwise don't make everyone a mod." #clubhousetownhall

Room size: options for creators to limit size? "8k is the current room cap due to performance issues. We always try to scale the community in a measured way. We want to make sure the experience improves as we add more people." #clubhousetownhall

"I think we've grown too fast - that's why we have to shift effort to keep service up. We have that cap now because we don't want things to break. We want to get to unlimited room sizes." #clubhousetownhall

"The way you can limit room size now is by making closed or social rooms, or private to members of a club. Numerical limits might come in later - we probably will add it if in demand." #clubhousetownhall

Club details: charting activity, regular schedule - can we see that? "I hadn't thought about doing it that way but it's a cool idea. We think about how to give people the right metadata to inform the decision to join a club. With clubs now we do a bad job of giving that info."

"Some are easy to gain, some are hard, but we want to make sure if we include number of rooms hosted these have to be qualitative rather than quantitative. Hopefully these listings will get a lot better in the coming weeks." #clubhousetownhall

Events listed on club pages: "Either this week or next week. For user profiles, not yet because we're focusing on clubs. We'll probably talk about it later today - if not too hard we will do that too soon." #clubhousetownhall

Club collaboration: hosting events together as co-hosts! "We need to figure our to UI of which clubs are displayed when you're in the room/feed (overflow screen, etc); then we need to think about who gets displayed in the event and can modify it." #clubhousetownhall

Rohan: "Also which club rules you accept when you join the room... A lot of complexity there." #clubhousetownhall

A debate ensues as to why people would want several clubs to host a room at the same time: audience/follower notifications, reach building, etc. #clubhousetownhall

What ways are there to promote shows? "Feed is super primitive atm but we are looking to get other signals there. Best way now is to put it in the calendar, share the link, tell people about it in other rooms in CH, add speakers with existing following, etc." #clubhousetownhall

"This is really important and it's an area will be doing a lot of work on. We design the structure of the network to promote discovery and follows." #clubhousetownhall

Creators on Android devices - support for a new wave? "It's no different from iOS creators - CH will be complete when we have Android users. It's more a question of how to grow the user community in a thoughtful way, so things don't break." #clubhousetownhall

"We are working on the specifics of the Android roll-out now. Likely to do it in waves rather than all at once. Many different devices, OS versions, etc - working on it for the next month or so." #clubhousetownhall

World Tour: learnings, next stops? "Every market is different; there is a lot of similarity, but each language and culture has some subtle differences which are important for us to understand. We want everyone to be able to experience CH in a way that feels native to them."

"Others top of mind: Japan, Germany, but there are so many others. We learned about who the creators are who ar driving the community forward, and what they love. If you're interested in helping out, write to us!" #clubhousetownhall

Shared block: "We are trying to help you decide who to follow or call someone on stage when they raise their hand. If you're viewing someone's profile and enough people in your network have blocked that person, there is a symbol flagging that person." #clubhousetownhall

"It doesn't mean they're bad, they might just have strong opinions. They are personalised to you based on who you follow. It's been a really useful tool to making sure CH stays a place where people have healthy conversations." #clubhousetownhall

Blocking someone for a limited amount of time (to get a break): "I never heard that request before but it's reasonable. Step one would be to allow you to see everyone you've blocked in one place to be able to choose to unblock them. We'll prioritise that." #clubhousetownhall

Notifying mods if someone is recording the room? "If you try to use iOS screen recording to record a room, you will get a notification, but the speakers/mods don't get notified. We don't know whether you have secured consent, and they can interrupt the flow of the conversation."

"We can never guarantee people aren't recording - they an be holding another device up or record it on their laptop. It would give a false sense of security if we added notifications. There is no 100% guarantee that a room isn't recorded unless it's closed." #clubhousetownhall

What is CH's view on being creator-friendly? "When we say creator we mean the creator of a room. It's someone who took the time and energy to gather people for conversation." #clubhousetownhall

"We always say creator first because we decided early on that at times the wishes of the creator and those of a listener are at odds, and that's just a fact. We will always choose the creator because we think it's a better experience." #clubhousetownhall

"If you can relentlessly prioritise the creators, it will be better for everyone - better content that everyone will enjoy." #clubhousetownhall

"This affects fundamental product decisions. There are reasons to do it the other way - other platforms do it. But we felt it was important for CH to always put creators in control of the conversation." #clubhousetownhall

"For example, people asked for chat feature, but we didn't add that to prevent a bad experience for the creator (people dunking on them as they speak, for example). Same with floating hearts and things like that." #clubhousetownhall

"Also something we think about regarding our business model. People use CH a lot because they feel better than they did before they opened the app, meeting people and having great conversations. We only make money when creators make money." #clubhousetownhall

"This allows us to create a company not based on harvesting data, how much we can annoy you before you go away. I don't mean to sound anti that model, but that's not what we want to build." #clubhousetownhall

"We want everyone who is great at talking, or has domain expertise and can bring people together, to have a space here they can invest in, feel good about and be paid for. This permeates everything." #clubhousetownhall

And to sign off CH-style, "this is Nicole and I'm done speaking."