Facebook’s new Audio Product Launch

BY TVISHA MISTRY

Have you ever used an app from which you could join “rooms” that directly connect you to celebrities and public figures?

Facebook’s new audio product makes this seem possible. Facebook co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced the plan to launch a series of products under the umbrella of “social audio”.

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has been experimenting more with audio platforms, and a few weeks ago, he unveiled new plans to compete with Clubhouse; a buzzy new audio startup that has been widely successful.

Clubhouse, now a year old, is a social networking app based on audio-chatting. Users can listen to conversations, interviews, and a variety of discussions between interesting people on various topics.

Recently, the app was evaluated and appraised at $4 billion. The start-up, Clubhouse’s speedy rise was duly noted by several well-established platforms, which have now launched or announced their own live audio features in recent months.

A few of these platforms include: Facebook- Live Audio Rooms, Twitter- Audio Spaces, Reddit- Reddit Talk, and even LinkedIn is currently working on an app that is similar in nature.

“Every once in a while a new medium comes along that can be adopted into a lot of different areas,” Zuckerberg said. “I think that’s going to be true with these live audio rooms.”

Leading into the past week Mark Zuckerberg announced his plans to launch audio products on Monday, April 19^th.

These plans include video conferencing products as well as the audio versions of rooms. The product is speculated to be similar to the app “Clubhouse”. The app will be of such nature that groups of people will be able to listen and interact with speakers on its virtual “stage”.

“You already have these communities organized around interests,” Zuckerberg said when announcing the product launch. “Allowing people to come together and have rooms where they can talk will be very useful.”

The idea for Facebook’s product is replicated by the existing app and can hardly be considered original as of now. Live Audio Rooms is soon to debut as a real-time (audio) chatting app. While there have been no official statements, there are several speculations that the product will be available to the public by summer.

Additionally, Facebook plans to launch a voice recording product, by the name “Soundbites”. Zuckerberg described the app as “snackable” audio content. He shared that the app would be a place for jokes, poems, pithy insights, or anecdotes, that go into an algorithmic feed.

The product will allow users to share individual voice messages or consume a string of audio clips joined together as a part of their newsfeeds. He further commented that this product would be like an audio version of Tik-Tok (reels).

Apart from this, Facebook has plans to launch a podcast discovery product. For this app in particular Mark Zuckerberg alluded to Facebook potentially partnering with an external podcast app and guiding users to that app to listen to podcasts in the background of their Facebook experience.

Although there have been no official statements, according to a report the podcast discovery product will be created in partnership with Spotify.