Facebook builds a product to compete with the Clubhouse
Facebook, which is known for copying its ideas from competitors, is adopting a voice-chat product similar to the popular app Clubhouse, according to a report from The New York Times, as the social network aims to expand into new forms of communication.
Clubhouse, a social networking app, has gained a lot of buzz by allowing people to congregate in voice chat rooms to talk about different topics.
And it appears that (Mark Zuckerberg), Facebook CEO, interested in forms of voice communication.
The news comes just five days after Zuckerberg joined the Clubhouse and participated in a room to talk about the future of augmented and virtual reality.
Its presence via the app was shocking, given it is a new social network, so the fact that Facebook may now be cloning Clubhouse is not surprising.
Facebook executives have ordered employees to create a similar product, but it is still in its early stages of development, and the project code name may change.
Emilie Haskell, a spokeswoman for Facebook, said: We've been connecting people through audio and video technologies for many years, and we're always exploring new ways to improve that experience for people.
Facebook has a history of breaking into new technologies and chasing different media that have attracted users, especially if these audiences are young people.
Facebook bought the photo-sharing platform Instagram, the instant messaging app WhatsApp, and the virtual reality company Oculus when they were all small startups.
Facebook is known to be ready to clone its competitors, as Instagram in 2016 copied the feature of Featured Stories from competitor Snapchat.
Last year, Instagram debuted Reels, a Tik Tok video producer.
And when Zoom teleconferencing became popular last year, it created Facebook Rooms, a group video chat service.
Facebook is working this year on a competitor to the popular newsletter Substack.
Facebook has been involved in developing experimental applications through the new product experience team, and the team has worked on podcast applications, travel applications, music applications, and others.
The clubhouse has gained traction among the elite of Silicon Valley as an invite-only iPhone app, and the app is still in beta, which means it is still in the testing phase prior to the wide release.
After registering with Clubhouse, users can create rooms dedicated to various topics, and instead of video or text messaging, the preferred medium in Clubhouse is the voice chat.
And the application has flourished in light of the epidemic as people searched for ways to communicate while staying isolated from each other, and the app ranks at the top of the App Store rankings in countries, such as: Germany, Italy, Japan, and Turkey.
Dozens of celebrities appeared on the app, joined various discussions, and used the service to promote their projects.
Others are trying to compete with the app, as the Twitter platform is testing a product called Spaces that offers similar voice chat functionality.