An unprecedented rise in popularity of Clubhouse, a voice-only social networking platform led tech giants including Twitter Facebook, and Spotify to compete for the launch ofs their own version. Twitter launched Twitter Spaces in early November, Spotify recently launched Greenrooms. And Facebook has launched its “Audio Rooms ” in the US.
Facebook was working on this feature for quite a long time. Recently, the beta testing of Audio Rooms was successfully completed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The selected participants gave a green light for its launch. Audio Rooms are available on both Facebook as well as Messenger app and completely free for everyone.
Features of Audio Rooms
Facebook’s Audio Rooms have borrowed basic features from the clubhouse and as usual, with its own flavor added. In Facebook’s “Audio Rooms”, the host is identified with a bold border around their avatar. Whereas, all speaking attendees are positioned alongside the host just like in clubhouse. Below that, there is space for mutual followers and listeners who can engage and interact by sending Stars. Then senders are brought to the “Front Row,” a special section that highlights the people who sent the Stars and can be made speaker by the host. There can be up to 50 speakers at a time but and there’s no limit on the listeners.
Audio Rooms come with a fundraiser support. During the live conversations, listeners and speakers can donate directly to it and view the live progress bar in real time. Audio Rooms can also be created in Facebook groups and group admins can control who can create audio Rooms.
The speaker speaking at the moment is distinguished with the blue rounded rings and verified speakers are highlighted with the ‘blue tick’ next to their names. Audio Rooms can also be shared through groups. The users can directly post it on Facebook walls. Similarly, it is easily shareable to external messaging sites like Viber and Whatsapp. Users can enable closed captions, report the user as well as react with the drop-down switch represented by three dots.
Facebook also provides an option to create Room-Clips which can later be shared externally. It also helps to provide a quick overview of the discussion topic on the room. Besides this Facebook also allows users from other podcasting platforms like Apple and Spotify to link and automatically update their podcast on Facebook.
