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The Launch of Live Audio Rooms & Podcast Playback In-Stream on Facebook

Facebook has officially implemented its new live audio features including the discovery and playback of podcasting within the app.

Facebook’s response to the Clubhouse – leading social audio trend first began at audio rooms. Facebook now offers its live audio room features to chosen public personalities and Facebook Groups in the USA, after the announcement of the upcoming option back in April, then testing in Taiwan with users during the last month.

Audio rooms launched in your Facebook News Feed will show up above the stories panel by the individuals and/or the groups you follow. This may point to the value that Facebook sees in the choice – and again, it’s where video hangouts are already in your Messenger Rooms, so this option is mainly in-line. Users may sign up for alerts of forthcoming audio rooms, similar to events, and through feed posts they may also tap into audio rooms. The Facebook audio interface very much like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces, with room profile pictures hosting on top of them.

Hosts can invite speakers beforehand or select listeners to attend the conversation during the webcast. Admins can regulate whether Moderators, members of groups or other administrators can create a Live Audio Room in the audio rooms of Facebook groups. The Live Audio Room can be heard by both members of public groups and guests, but only members can listen to it in private groups Rooms are limited to 50 speakers, while the number of listeners who can be tuned in is not restricted. In addition, Live Audio Room hosts will be able to select a non-profit or fundraiser that can help listeners and speakers throughout their chat and donate online.

Selected members of the public will be able to establish audio rooms in the initial roll-out. Facebook uses several popular developers to promote:

  • TOKiMONSTA, a grammatical electronic artist, will discuss women’s excellence and overcome difficulties
  • Russel Wilson will discuss how to train your mind like a sporting class American football quarterback
  • Rosa Clemente will be hosting a debate about Blackness in the Latinx community as an organiser, producer, independent journalist and academic activist.
  • Listen to the way in which a professional sports player lives in a live audio room hosted by Omareloff, a streamer, entertainer and Internet sensation.
  • The social entrepreneur Amanda Nguyen will discuss justice and progress in an exceptionally heated period with fellow change makers.

Last week Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also tested a new feature, which pointed towards the next launch and will certainly see lots of Facebook users tuning in to get a sense of how their audio social capabilities will perform with these popular people. Facebook is arriving to the party late, somehow with Twitter spaces apparently now the leader in the audio social competition, as Clubhouse slowly releases to iOS 

Nonetheless, Facebook may prevail, with the emphasis on introducing audio rooms to groups assisting in ensuring that its audio broadcasts remain relevant and are promoted to users who have demonstrated interest in these themes and speakers in particular.

The next major difficulty for audio social technologies is discoverability. If people log onto Clubhouse and cannot readily locate rooms which are important to them, they will rapidly give up on Twitter, which still doesn’t help to emphasise significant issues based on use.