Facebook Begins Initial Testing of Its Clubhouse Clone, Expanding Audio Suite

Facebook Inc. has started the first test of its Live Audio Rooms feature with public figures and creators based in Taiwan. This is part of an expansion of the company’s audio services that will over time include podcast hosting and creation tools.

The Social Media giant had earlier given this announcement in April saying, “We’re going to start testing Live Audio Rooms and we expect it to be available to everyone on the Facebook app by the summer.” 

What’s in the New Feature? 

As shown in the image display above, the Audio feature will look just like Clubhouse’s rooms user interface. What’s unique is Facebook’s “Stars” that allows you to support your favourite creator or public figure, or donate to causes you’re passionate about. 

When Live Audio Rooms launch, fans can buy Stars and send them to Creators while they’re streaming. Fans can also send animated, virtual gifts attached to different star amounts that will appear while streaming is Live. Facebook will pay hosts $0.01 USD for every Star they receive. 

Facebook noted that the following countries are yet to be able to send Stars to favourites:

• Crimea
• Cuba
• Iran
• North Korea
• South Korea
• Syria

Providing a feature for audio within groups could ultimately lead to the Social Media giant’s growth in terms of revenue and daily active users. Facebook started well by granting everyone access to audio rooms. However, there’s a possible challenge of users discovering the appropriate audio rooms to participate in and that will be valuable to the users’ individual interests. 

Clubhouse is trying to solve a similar problem because its users complain of being notified of too many rooms happening at the same time. From an individual perspective this can water down the whole essence of  the tool. 

Social Media Today gave a very good rendition while giving its report on the same issue about Twitter’s “Spaces”. “While Twitter hasn’t worked out its Spaces discovery process as yet, it is possible to search for in-progress rooms if you have a moment and you’re looking to tune in.”

The problem then, however, is similar to the problem with live-streaming – with so many people now able to stream, the sheer volume of options available makes it increasingly hard to sift through the content, and find anything relevant.

But by making groups a focus, Facebook eliminates this element – because the audio rooms that you see, and which are highlighted to you in-app, will be based on your noted interests. The in-progress streams displayed in your feed will stem from the groups that you’ve chosen to join, so it automatically addresses the discovery problem, without any algorithm intervention.

Which is why this is such a clever move from Zuck and Co. – and when you also consider that over 1.8 billion people are active in Facebook groups every month, it really could prove to be the killer element within Facebook’s broader audio social roll-out.

It’s a simple, but effective way to address what will become the next big problem with audio rooms, as usage expands. And while it may be annoying to see Facebook steal another app’s idea and dominate it once again, unless the other apps can improve discovery, that is, most likely, what’s going to happen – which is also why Reddit’s audio ‘Reddit Talk’ option will also likely prove to be another winner in the audio social race in the longer term.

Which could also, eventually, leave Clubhouse on the outer.