I'm very concerned about the YA community finding Clubhouse, so I'm going to make a CH for YA Book Twitter thread at the top of the hour.

Okay, YA Book Twitter. What is Clubhouse? Clubhouse (or CH for short) is an audio-only app available in beta for iPhone users only. You can technically use it on your iPad as well though it's geared for the iPhone.

CH is invite only. Once you're in CH, you get a limited number of invites (anywhere between 0 invites to 20 invites, typically). Be careful who you invite because your name is on their profile page. This means that if you “nominate” them, they are permanently tied to you.

Whatever the person you invite onto this platform says reflects on you and if they mess up and get banned, you could get banned too. Don't hand out your invites to people you cannot vouch for.

CH consists of rooms that you can enter from your "hallway" (feed) and your hallway is determined by the people that you follow. Who you follow depends on what rooms you see so it’s important to only follow people who are in rooms you want to see.

You can also choose interests to help curate your hallways as well as hide rooms that you don't want to see in your hallway. Hiding rooms is new so while it does hide the room, I can't say that I've seen much change in the algorithm yet in preventing similar rooms from appearing.

You can also join clubs that make public/private rooms which I’m sure will be even more popular once this is no longer in beta. Once you follow a club, you have to be manually accepted into the club. Once you are accepted, the club will appear on your profile.

While your request to join a club is pending, the club will solely appear in your "Following" list. BIPOC Queer friends, there is no way to hide a club that you follow/join so please be aware of that if you are joining spaces that you don't want "public."

If you want to start a CH club, you can apply and you need to consecutively moderate a handful of rooms before you can be considered to make your own club.

The Rooms. You aren't allowed to record conversations on CH. If you do, you can get banned. This doesn't stop people of course. So know that your safe space is your group chat, not the internet. (CH claims that they don't record the rooms but this is the newest tech giant, so.)

The rooms that people you follow join will appear in your hallway for as long as they are in that room. If you're in a good room, maybe follow a mod/speaker in the room before cause if the person you follow leaves & you leave by accident, you won't be able to find it again.

Right now, the rooms that I see range from "pro" advice rooms (the good rooms are diamonds in the rough, tbd), fandom (tv, movies, books, theatre), comedy rooms (the parody rooms are A+), and community rooms. Again, who you follow determines what rooms pop up in your hallway.

Reading the Room. Once you're in a room, you can be either a 1) Moderator, 2) Speaker, 3) Listener who is "Followed by the speakers," or 4) Listener as "Others in the Room." Every room is run differently.

Read the room before deciding to 1) stay and 2) insert yourself into the conversation, if it's a room that is more open to conversation. Some rooms invite self promo while others explicitly do not.

Rooms range from lecture style & Q&As to casual, etc. Mods make or break the room. Can you lead a room & bring people in with your voice + can you lead a room as a Leader w/out letting the Mod badge get to your head? You don't even have to be in a room for 5 min to get the vibes.

If you host a room, be sure to not hand out a bunch of moderator badges because all moderators have the power to make other people mods & moving speakers to the audience without asking you. This brings me to trolls.

Trolls do get in. If you are a moderator, you can kick out a speaker that is being a troll. If you make them a moderator before realizing that they are a troll, they could move all of the mods to the audience (including the host) & take over the room or completely END the room.

This is a good place to mention that if you are a Moderator/Speaker of a room and you leave the room but return to the room, you will return to the "Stage" as a Moderator/Speaker. The moderators can move you back to the audience but until they do, you are on the stage.

You can also move yourself back to the audience after you're done speaking. Some people like to stay on the stage to "clap"/agree (flip their mute button) in smaller rooms or to gain followers in bigger rooms so just be aware of the latter (which can also be in small ones too).

You can invite people to join a room you are currently in by "pinging" them. This is a very quick way to get unfollowed if you don't know the person and are pinging them into a room with a nonsense room title. Many choose not to join rooms based on the title of the room alone.

For example, if you're pinging someone into a room about the worst books of the year and that person's brand is lifting up books, you're going to get unfollowed. Respect people's brands when pinging them into spaces.

You can schedule a room as well, which is great for author/agent Q&As, etc... I've also noticed writers conduct writing sessions/sprints on CH as well. It's always fun in the beginning when a new tech giant opens up.

There are people on CH who have 200 CH followers & 100k Instagram followers. There are people on CH who have 2k CH followers & 400 Twitter followers. Will some problematic people try to rebrand on CH? Of course. Are there rooms on CH that are solely for Discourse purposes? Yep.

There already is CH discourse so if we add in YA Book Twitter Discourse LOL. Oh god. People will certainly dig deeper graves and some people will try and succeed in rising on the third day. Brace yourselves.

CH is great for entertainment (The Lion King was fantastic and Rent is coming).

CH is great for networking with people you may have never met otherwise.

CH is great for learning (please know that everyone with a Mod badge is NOT an expert in their field, so please use wisdom!).

If you do not think that you can handle CH, don't join. If you join CH and discover that it's not for you, that's fine too. The experience is what you make it but the experience is also one that you curate alongside the creators who are figuring it out themselves in real time.

Clubhouse is in beta & is great but it is also messy. So just be aware of that when you get your invite. I am NOT a CH expert, I just wanna ease YA Book Twitter in since I see a lot of ways this app can create/encore drama & I don't mean the Seasons of Love kind.

Writers, CH is a phenomenal space for research purposes. There are talks with astronauts and all types of scientists, etc... I'm a sci-fi person myself so I've found myself in some VERY interesting rooms. Obviously vet the speakers if you are doing research.

I need to eat so that my COVID recovering body doesn't fall apart but mutuals, if you have any questions, DM. Again, not an expert but here to help. (I also only have a handful of invites so please don't ask because I don't want to tell you no).