Clubhouse launches ‘Wave,’ a new way to pull friends into audio chats

After the feature was leaked last week, Clubhouse is officially launching a new way to invite people to audio chats called “Wave.” The company announced the news at a surprise town hall on Thursday and is enabling the feature today for all users on iOS and Android.

With Wave, you can invite friends to a live audio room just by tapping a waving hand emoji. Once they receive their invitation, they can choose to join your call and immediately get added to an audio room. The company’s blog explains in a bit more detail:

To send a Wave, swipe right on the Hallway or tap the dots icon at the bottom left of the screen. Then tape the wave button next to the person you’d like to chat with. They’ll get a notification that you said hello, and know that you’re open to chatting. If they are too, they can join a private room with you — open just to the people you waved at. You can keep it to one social circle, introduce friends from different groups to each other, or open the room up more broadly and make it for everyone.

Image: Clubhouse

If someone doesn’t immediately respond, you can continue to use Clubhouse as you normally would. The company also says, to avoid confusion, if you have the app on in the background, you won’t immediately be pulled into a room if someone responds.

Clubhouse seems to want to encourage more causal, social, small moments in its app, which as of late has seemed to become associated with professional, appointment-based experiences. The company brought its app to Android in May and removed its waitlist in July, which means there might be more people to casually talk to than when the app first launched.

Update 9/23 3:20PM ET: Added image from Clubhouse.