Having recently announced app support in India across five different languages, audio social app Clubhouse has now rolled out a new ‘Replays’ feature, which will let users record and save their conversations, and listen to them later.
According to a blog post on the roll-out of the feature, the idea behind ‘Replays’ was to create something that captured the energy of a live Clubhouse room, in ways that non-interactive audio streams could not. “Today, we’re starting to roll out Replays on both iOS and Android. Think of it as live, but later — and available to everyone,” the blog explains. So how does this feature work?
Also read: You can now use the Clubhouse app in five Indian languages
‘Replays’ is an optional feature that creators can choose to toggle on or off for any public room. Users will still get to see the same elements of a live Clubhouse room: such as ‘Leave Quietly’, PTRs (pull to refresh) and mic taps. Clubhouse had recently launched ‘pinned links’, where room moderators could pin a link to the top of the room, and update them depending on the context and flow of the conversation. The links can be used for polls or surveys, sharing products, hosting fundraisers etc. In ‘Replays’, ‘pinned links’ will remain fully interactive, so they update throughout the course of the room, allowing creators to share relevant content, the blog explains.
the best of live ✨ but later!
— Clubhouse (@Clubhouse) November 8, 2021
Replays are here and they're so much more than just a recording. Creators can download audio, and when you listen on Clubhouse, you'll see all the dynamics of the stage, PTRs, *and* hop from speaker to speaker.
live now on iOS & Android 💖 pic.twitter.com/zDtenNy60c
Another interesting feature in ‘Replays’ will allow users to skip to the next speaker. This lets users tap through to their favorite people and focus the room on the parts that are more important. According to the blog, you can also pause, play, scrub, clip and listen to a room at 1.5x or 2x speed.
In a live Clubhouse room, users are able to see the people, friends who are listening in. The same feature will work with Replays as well, even if they listened after. But perhaps the most crucial feature in ‘Replays’ is the option to download the audio. Room creators can edit the audio and use it across a variety of platforms: as a podcast, a YouTube clip, an Instagram story or as an embed in their newsletter or article. The replay will also be discoverable within Clubhouse — from club pages, speakers’ profiles (unless they choose to hide it), search (which will start next week), and more, the blog explains.
On the analytics side, Clubhouse also introduced a ‘total attendee count’ feature. Using this, room creators will be able to see and also share cumulative counts of all the people who joined a room. According to the blog, this is the first of many new analytics features that Clubhouse will introduce for room creators in the coming months.
Also read: Playing it by the ear: the art of debate on audio social apps