LinkedIn joins the race to launch a Clubhouse rival

• The social network for professionals has confirmed that it is working on ‘bringing audio’ to other parts of LinkedIn as it races to launch its Clubhouse rival.
  
• LinkedIn’s product is currently in the testing phase.
  
• The company said that the audio experiences will be connected to the users’ ‘professional identity’, which would be the LinkedIn accounts of users.
  

LinkedIn is the latest company to join the race to launch a Clubhouse clone. The US-based professional social media network has confirmed that it is testing Clubhouse-like audio features.

Clubhouse is an audio-chat app that is currently available only for iPhones. It is valued at $1 billion, and was co-founded by Paul Davison and Rohan Seth. It has over 8 million downloads and at the moment, users need an invitation to join the service. The company has said it is working on an Android version as well.

“We’re doing some early tests to create a unique audio experience connected to your professional identity,”LinkedIn’s spokesperson Suzi Owens said in a statement to TechCrunch.

“We’re looking at how we can bring audio to other parts of LinkedIn such as events and groups, to give our members even more ways to connect to their community,” Owens further added.

When launched, LinkedIn will join a long list of social media companies racing against time to ensure they incorporate Clubhouse’ functionality into their own services.

Twitter announced it is rolling out Spaces to a wider number of users, Facebook is reportedly working on a similar product as well, Spotify is working on its own take on Clubhouse, collaboration tool Slack is also jumping in on the craze and billionaire investor Mark Cuban doesn’t want to be left out either.

According to a screenshot shared by TechCrunch, LinkedIn’s Clubhouse rival will include features like joining and leaving the room, comment reactions, and speaking requests, among other things. The layout is similar to that of the Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces apps.

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