Here's How To Find More People To Follow On Clubhouse

If you’ve ever listened to a podcast and thought, “Shoot, I wish they’d asked for my opinion,” you’re a prime contender for Clubhouse, the invite-only audio app that connects people who are hankering for a live chat. But like any kind of social media, your experience on Clubhouse is only as good as the people you follow. And given that the iOS app is still in invite-only mode (even though it feels like everyone and their cousin is on it), it takes a little finagling to find people to follow on Clubhouse. Finding your friends on Clubhouse will let you start a tea-spilling room among yourselves, but you can also connect with people on Clubhouse who you don’t know (yet!) to tune into interesting convos.

“With Zoom, you’re always talking to people you know,” Austen Tosone, a fashion blogger, previously told Bustle. “You’re never on a call with a ton of random people unless you’re, you know, meeting the cousin’s boyfriend at Thanksgiving. But on Clubhouse, you can really bump shoulders with people, like a real conference.”

How To Find Your Friends On Clubhouse

Finding your IRL friends on Clubhouse is easy. In order to invite anyone else to the app, you have to give Clubhouse access to your Contacts, per Recode, which you’ll be prompted to do with an in-app notification. You can turn this off later by going to your iPhone’s Settings and tapping Contacts; you’ll see a list of every app that has access to your Contacts, which you might want to tidy up while you’re there.

With your Clubhouse account and Contacts linked, you’ll get a notification anytime one of your friends (or a random Hinge date whose number you saved) joins the app. You can also see which of your contacts has joined Clubhouse recently by tapping the notifications icon that’s shaped like a bell in the upper right-hand corner of the app. Scroll down, and tap “Follow” for whoever you want to be connected with.

If one of your friends isn’t on Clubhouse, you can easily invite them by tapping the envelope icon that’s third from the right on the upper menu bar. You’ll see how many invites you have left, and search through your contacts for whoever you want to join. If you rescinded Clubhouse’s access to your Contacts, you’ll be prompted to re-authorize it by tapping this button, too.

How To Find People To Follow On Clubhouse

Unless you’re the CEO of networking, you probably want to expand your Clubhouse horizons beyond your personal contact list. You can do so by tapping the Search icon in the upper left corner of the app. There, you’ll be prompted to follow people you might know, explore different conversation topics to follow, or search for people directly. This is where you’ll follow celebs who are active on the app, like Drake or Tiffany Haddish, or thought leaders you want to hear more from.

You can also search for Clubs, aka groups of like-minded users who get together for discussions. By clicking into Clubs you find interesting, you can tap around to different profiles of people in the Club and follow them from there. This will also help you surface notifications for interesting talks to listen in on — or maybe even join yourself.

Want to take your Clubhouse connections one step further? You can sign up for Humans on Clubhouse, which promises “smart connections to awesome humans” on the app. To sign up, enter your name, Clubhouse handle, location and email, and select topics you want to chat about. The form will also prompt you to share an elevator pitch about yourself and why you’re interested in connecting 1-1 with other Clubhouse creators.

The more people you find and follow on Clubhouse, the more interesting kinds of talks and experiences you can have on the app.