Facebook Social Voice plans include podcast discovery and clubhouse clone

Facebook wants you to start talking and listening on Facebook.

Sources say the social network plans to announce a series of products – some of which won’t appear for some time – under the umbrella of “Social Voice” on Monday. They include Facebook’s involvement in the Clubhouse, the audio-only social network that has grown rapidly over the past year, as well as a push to discover and distribute podcasts, with the help of Spotify.

Facebook Voice plans include:

• Audio version only of the rooms, One of the video conferencing products launched a year ago, When the pandemic led to the mass adoption of Zoom.
• A Clubhouse-like product that allows groups of people to listen and interact with speakers on a virtual “platform”.
• A product that will allow Facebook users to record short audio messages and post them to their newsfeeds, as they can currently do with text, images and videos.
• Podcast discovery product to connect to Spotify, which has invested heavily in podcasts over the past two years. I’m not sure if Facebook intends to do more than flag podcasts to its users and send them to Spotify. (Note: Spotify and Facebook were first linked 10 years ago, when Facebook was pushing an idea “Frictionless poleWhich was supposed to mean that your Facebook friends can see what you’ve read, listened to, or watched. It faded away very fast.)

I’m also not sure what product calendar Facebook will announce tomorrow. My feeling is that the Rooms product – which is, again, a video conferencing version without video – is the most likely candidate to go live immediately. Sources said more products may not appear, even in beta form, until later this spring.

Finally, the ads aim to signal CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s belief that his users are willing to use voice and voice to communicate with each other. He’s not the only Big Tech CEO to have expressed interest in the idea recently: Twitter has already launched Spaces, a full-fledged company in the Clubhouse. Apple gears up for new podcast subscription service it could announce on Tuesday as part of its special services Product launch.

Zuckerberg is scheduled to speak with tech reporter (and Vox Media contributor) Casey Newton on Monday at 1 p.m. EST; This weekend Newton Wrote He and Zuckerberg will talk about “this frenzied moment of transition in technology and media,” noting that Facebook is “increasingly interested in press releases, live audio and other technologies”.

Facebook provided this without comment in response to a request from Recode: “We have been connecting people through audio and video technologies for many years and are always exploring new ways to improve this experience for people.” Reps for Spotify and Apple declined to comment.

Zuckerberg has shown interest in Clubhouse, which took off at the start of the pandemic It has grown rapidly over the past year, which is pretty clear. He’s been involved in several discussions about the service, including one with Spotify CEO Daniel Ek. The club, meanwhile, has it I just announced a new funding round Which puts the company at $ 4 billion – just months after announcing an estimated $ 1 billion funding round.

Meanwhile, observers have speculated that the Clubhouse, which offers fleeting, real-time conversations in front of an audience of 5,000, may struggle to regain the hype it experienced in 2020 and earlier this year. year, when the world was locked and looking for distractions. The app’s download rate appears to have slowed with the newness of the app, and Clubhouse did not update its user totals as of February, when it announced it had 10 million users.

And if you want a thoughtful review of the challenges produced by Clubhouse, I suggest you read this Twitter series from tech investor Shaan Puri. TL; dr: It’s difficult to consistently create live audio-only content that attracts existing users and attracts new users.