Facebook joins the Clubhouse competitors’ list, announces Live Audio Rooms feature

• Facebook’s Live Audio Rooms will be the company’s attempt to make a Clubhouse-like platform.
  
• The feature is scheduled to go live sometime between June to September this year.
  
• Live Audio Rooms will be recordable and monetizable and will become available in Messenger as well.
  

Facebook has announced a new feature called Live Audio Rooms as it looks to take on Clubhouse, the audio-only platform that went viral a few weeks ago.

The company announced that Live Audio Rooms will start rolling out “later this summer”, which would be between June to September 2021. The initial rollout will include groups and public figures in the testing phase. Thereafter, it will be made available in Messenger, so you can start an audio conversation with your friends.

Facebook says that these conversations will be recordable, and users will also be able to distribute these recordings. The company also has plans for helping users monetise these audio chats – Facebook says it will let users grant access to these rooms via a subscription or a one-time fee.


Audio Creator Fund to promote ‘emerging audio creators’

Facebook has also outlined plans to set up an Audio Creator Fund that will be geared toward supporting “emerging audio creators”.

Beyond funding, the company will allow these audio chats to show up in the news feed in the form of short audio clips called “Soundbites”. These audio chats will show up in your news feed just like other posts and will be promoted by an algorithm.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg called Soundbites as Reels, but for audio.

Going all-in on social audio

Zuckerberg is going all-in on social audio.

In a conversation with Platformer’s Casey Neistat, Zuckerberg revealed that his company is going to partner with Spotify soon. This partnership will bring the Spotify player to Facebook’s platform, allowing Facebook users to stream music and podcasts without leaving the social network.

Apart from this, the Facebook Stars system – a way to monetize content on the platform – will be enabled for Live Audio Rooms as well. This tipping system will help users generate money from their audio streams.

Facebook’s the latest, but not the last to compete with Clubhouse

With this announcement, the social media giant has joined a growing list of companies that are either working on or have already launched their respective Clubhouse competitors.

Other popular names in the list include LinkedIn, Twitter, collaboration tool Slack, Spotify, and billionaire investor Mark Cuban’s Fireside Chat.

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