Last week Facebook announced they are going to take on clubhouse with their own audio platform… And this is how they are going to do it!

Facebook has always been innovative platform that adapts to the needs and wants of their users.  Many have argued Facebook are simply copying competitor products, but Facebook respond by simply saying that they are adapting to what the users are interested in.

Whether Facebook copy competitors or simply adapt to market conditions, either way they make no apologies for their approach.  In fact, Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has in the past been very honest about their approach, and has said,

“We’ve certainly adapted features that others have led in…”

It is with that in mind, it can’t come as any surprise that Facebook now launch ‘Live Audio Rooms’, which is like what the Clubhouse app have created as the flagship offering on their app.

Facebook have done this before with many other features… this includes introducing stories on both Facebook and Instagram, which was initially a Snapchat feature, The Reels feature on Instagram, we could argue basically is the TikTok offering, where short videos snippets are offered in portrait format.

As market leader Facebook will often be called out when borrowing and creating features like their competitors’.  However, it is not just Facebook who uses this practice, Twitter recently added their own audio room and YouTube introduced portrait snippet videos.

The new Facebook feature was announced via a private link.  In which Mark Zuckerberg took to the virtual stage to test this new application.  The official launch date is 22 June 2021.  As you can see from the image below, its resemblance to Clubhouse is striking.  

Initially, as with most new Facebook features… It will be tested in North America and then, if successful, it will be rolled out across the rest of the world.       

Here are some of the key features of the new ‘Facebook Live Audio Room’.

• Ability to minimise the Live audio feature while still using Facebook.
• As with Clubhouse, you can close the Facebook app and still have an audio on in the background.
• You can follow speakers and listeners, and this is also integrated with Profiles/Pages.

On the beta test that Mark Zuckerberg was on earlier this week, it seems to indicate… Once you’ve missed the live audio… You’ve missed it. It remains to be seen if a recordable feature will be added, that can be listened to a later date or maybe even uploaded as a podcast!