Clubhouse, the rapidly growing audio chat platform may soon enable the DM chat feature as well. This became apparent when a keynote speaker spotted this feature in the Hallway while listening to a room. The new feature is termed “Backchannel” and it might let you chat with others while listening to the room as well.

Wow looks like accidental update of @clubhouse enabled in app backchannel & switch of side bar & full experience.

Seems it’s rolled back now but from what I saw it was beautiful!!

On stage > move to hallway > hit arrow > back channel popped up! @jowyang @GaryLHenderson pic.twitter.com/5bJfVlg7t5

— Brian Fanzo 🧢 Keynote Speaker $ADHD (@iSocialFanz) June 18, 2021

Currently, this "Backchannel" panel appears as a blank page. This suggests the feature just slipped out of the hands of the company and is not fully ready.

The company believes the chat feature is one more way to connect with others. Sometimes, people in the room want to deepen their relationship or friendship with each other. Also, sometimes a room accommodates as many as 8000 people at one time on Clubhouse, and it becomes a little difficult to bring every raised hand up in the speaker section. Having a DM section that looks no lesser than a comment/discussion section on other audio platforms, may help moderators to gain more insights on the ongoing topics and take more questions from people who couldn’t come up due to a swarm of speakers.

Also, sometimes, not every member in the room wants to speak for whatever reasons, so this discussion panel that lets you add your views through text could prove to be pretty handy.

Active users of Clubhouse have always questioned the absence of this feature. It is great to note that the company is finally ready to bring this up. Previously, during a company’s town hall, CEO Paul Davison also revealed the company is working on this feature.

Davison said,

…. I think that there are so many people who do DM backchannels all the time, so many people who want to deepen friendships and relationships with people and do all sorts of other stuff — I think this is something that we should have.

This suggests the company might be readying a one on one chat feature as well, unlike what other platforms are offering.

Other audio platforms, which launched after seeing the great adoption of Clubhouse have made this feature available already. For instance, the recently launched Spotify Greenroom has this feature built-in and it lets people in the room chat with each other, though it looks more like a comment section, just what you see below YouTube Live videos. Listeners add their views to the discussion and can also send GIFs here alongside the text and emoji.

And FWIW, @SpotifyGrnroom already has a backchannel feature, so expect @Clubhouse's to (possibly) look something like this.

/cc @ashleyrcarman @bryanmenegus pic.twitter.com/EyBWMSy6zX

— Chris Messina (@chrismessina) June 21, 2021

It is currently unknown if Clubhouse is bringing anything different to such a discussion panel