You can now slide into people’s DMs on Clubhouse. Backchannel, the social audio company’s direct messaging feature, is now available to all users on iOS and Android. Users can communicate one-on-one, in groups, and send links for the time being. They can’t transmit photos or videos now, but a spokesperson says that functionality, as well as a “few other features,” will be added soon. There will also be a secondary inbox where message requests can be stored if desired.
The feature is intended to allow moderators to communicate with one another in a live room, to connect individuals after an event, and to promote text discussions that would otherwise require the use of a separate app.
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This news, however, comes as no surprise: Clubhouse inadvertently disclosed the feature in June. Nonetheless, this is a significant milestone for the app, which has already been downloaded over 8 million times on Android smartphones and has over 500,000 rooms created daily, according to the company.
Backchannel brings Clubhouse up to speed and ensures users keep their chats, and more of their social lives, on the app. Its competitors, notably Twitter Spaces and Facebook Live Audio Rooms, both allow individuals to text chat while also running or participating in an audio conversation.
Backchannel will serve as a private messaging system for both one-on-one and group conversations. Clubhouse anticipates clients using it to privately communicate within a channel’s co-hosts, answer critical questions or privately thank members outside of the public group conversation, or just audibly chat with their friends.
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When the DM function was leaked for a few hours in June, the Clubhouse co-founder indicated that creating the feature to meet the app’s use scenarios wouldn’t be easy and wouldn’t happen straight away.
%u201CAs part of our product building process, Clubhouse regularly explores and tests potential features,%u201D a Clubhouse spokesperson had told TechCrunch back then. %u201CThese functions sometimes become part of the app, sometimes they don%u2019t.%u201D
Greenroom, Spotify’s Clubhouse copycat, had also launched its own live text chatroom, which users can join by swiping right in the app, which gave it an edge over Clubhouse.
