From now on, voice becomes a fundamental strategic line for Facebook. We were aware that the social network was preparing its own audiochat tool to rival Clubhouse – and had even been testing an experimental app called Hotline – but now we know that audio is going to be the center of its strategy for the next few months, going far beyond launching their own audio chat rooms.
Facebook’s Live Audio Rooms will arrive in the summer, although they will not be available to all users at first
Facebook has presented a set of novelties that will carry the voice above -on many occasions- the texts, images or video on the social network. The company has prepared a series of new products that it will be launching in the coming months, in some cases, for all users, and in others, only for some of them, with which it will be possible to interact by voice on the social network and much more. They are the following:
-Live Audio Rooms (Clubhouse’s rival): Facebook has finally given official and confirmed details of what its Clubhouse rival will be like. It will be an integrated function within the social network and not a standalone application, and it will arrive “next summer”, although Facebook has not provided a more exact date.
Initially, it will be the Groups -also strategic for the company- and the most relevant people and influencers in the social network who can test the Live Audio Rooms, in a strategy similar to the one carried out by the company when it launched the Live , live video broadcasts, which were first reserved for a few privileged users.
The Live Audio Rooms will also be launched in Messenger, and users will be able to chat with their friends, and as a novelty, the conversations will be able to be recorded and distributed. There will also be the possibility of charging to access the rooms, either occasionally or by offering users the possibility of subscribing to all the content that is developed.
In addition, Live Audio Rooms users will have access to the Stars program, the Facebook function that allows them to send tips to relevant and well-known personalities. Thus, small donations can be made to the creators of audiochat rooms.
These two possibilities would constitute the first ways to monetize the service and allow the creators of Live Audio Rooms to earn money, something similar to what Clubhouse has already begun to test .
-Fund for creators. Facebook has also indicated that it will create a Fund for Audio Creators with the idea of providing support to outstanding users to create content in the new functionality. It is a way of attracting users who may be relevant in other audiochat apps by offering them advantages or even financial compensation. Clubhouse has also been experimenting in this regard .
-Soundbites. Facebook will launch a new tool that will allow users to easily cut and create small audio clips to share a statement with other users or post it on social media. You can add all kinds of effects, background music, etc… to make creative pieces.
In this functionality, an algorithm will even be developed so that the most popular audio clips have more reach and can go viral. Although the contents will also be displayed in the user’s update feed, there will be a specific tab for them on Facebook. Get ready for the age of audio memes.
-Podcasts. Facebook also doesn’t want to be left out of the podcast business, which is already strategic for other companies like Spotify or Amazon . For this reason, the social network will begin to show recommendations for podcast programs so that users can learn about them and share them with their friends. In addition, it will partner with Spotify to be able to include a player within the platform, in the user’s update feed, so that they can listen to the best Spotify podcasts whenever they want.
According to Mark Zuckerberg, more than 170 million people follow a podcast Page on Facebook, and more than 35 million people are part of a podcast-related Group. The social network wants to become a strategic community for the advancement and dissemination of content through voice.
If you want to know more about Facebook’s audio news, you can watch the video that the social network has distributed
