New Delhi: It looks like Facebook has decided to take on Clubhouse as it announced a new feature called Live Audio Rooms.
Facebook announced that Live Audio Rooms will start rolling out “later this summer” which will have a new feature, Soundbites, where users can create and share short audio clips.
The company says that these conversations will be recordable, and users will also be able to distribute these recordings.
Read the full press release here:
Storytelling helps people build meaningful bonds: we all have stories to share with our friends, our communities, and the world at large. Speech, sound, and language are the building blocks for how we connect with each other. That’s why good audio experiences can feel immersive and intimate at the same time. They make you feel like you’re right there in the room with your friends and family, sitting around at the dining table, even if you’re miles apart. Audio seamlessly fits within our busy lives, allows us to be inspired by new ideas, and talk with other like-minded people without pressure. You can share your personal story or join in on a global conversation in any way, anytime, anywhere — even on a bad hair day without any makeup — or in your car or on a run!
At Facebook, we’ve seen the continuing rise of audio on our platforms, from audio calls to audio messages on WhatsApp and Messenger. We’re working to make audio messages easier to record, and more fun — including the ability for people to send familiar sound clips to their friends that range from sound effects like crickets chirping to quotes from popular songs. But we know there are more social experiences to create to help people say what they want to say, discover new voices they haven’t heard before, or exchange ideas at the speed of sound.
Right now, it’s still too difficult for most people to do any of this. The best audio creation tools are reserved for the pros. It’s still too hard to discover and share awesome audio content, and too cumbersome to assemble the right group of people to have a conversation about your favorite topic, at the right time. At Facebook, we’ve invested in the full spectrum of audio technologies to solve these problems. From audio quality enhancements, captions, speech translations, and superhuman hearing, our goal is to make audio presence easy, natural, and immersive so you can more fully experience social presence.
Whether it’s an in-depth conversation or your passing thoughts, we are building audio tools and formats that connect people with the things they care about.
A Sound Studio in Your Pocket
The first thing we’re building is a set of new audio creation tools. Just like we did for photos and videos, we want everyone to have tools that are powerful enough for the pros, but intuitive and fun — like having a sound studio in your pocket. We’ve been investing in audio technologies — such as speech-to-text and voice morphing — for a long time and will make them available in an audio creation tool directly inside the Facebook app. Through our advances in AI, we can make audio quality magically great — even if you record on a busy street corner. You will be able to use music from Facebook’s Sound Collection in the background of your story to set the tone. And with the ability to mix audio tracks, a growing collection of sound effects, voice effects and filters, it should be a lot of fun too.
Soundbites: A New Social Audio Format
These audio creation tools will enable you to create Soundbites — short-form, creative audio clips for capturing anecdotes, jokes, moments of inspiration, poems, and many other things we haven’t yet imagined. We’ll start testing Soundbites over the next few months with a small number of creators and refine the product with their input before making it available to everyone. To start, we’re collaborating with creators to experiment with different concepts. Imagine, comedian Drew Lynch, sharing his short rants and food reviews in ASMR; Lolo Spencer, an accessibility advocate, reciting daily affirmations and her favorite inspirational quotes; Tobe Nwigwe, a visionary and entrepreneur, sharing his “convos with Tobe” about fatherhood and being a first-generation Nigerian American; Molly Burke, a motivational speaker who is blind, recording empowering stories about overcoming adversity; and Josh Sundquist, an author and comedian, using voice effects to augment his impersonations and storytelling. The possibilities are endless and we can’t wait to hear their Soundbites.
Podcasts Are Coming to Facebook
While we’re big believers in the power of short-form audio, we also know that some stories and conversations deserve more airtime. More than 170 million people are already connected to hundreds of thousands of podcast pages on Facebook, and more than 35 million people are members of fan groups around podcasts — but until now, you had to leave the Facebook app to listen to these episodes. Within the next few months, you’ll be able to listen to podcasts directly on the Facebook app — both while using the app or when the app is backgrounded. And because it’s still hard to discover podcasts you like, we will help you easily find new podcasts and episodes based on your interests, comment on them and recommend them to your friends. And podcast creators will be able to reach and connect with new listeners — all directly within the Facebook app.
