Facebook announces live rooms, podcasts and other audio products to take on Clubhouse

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that Facebook’s goal is to build audio products that will be as strong as its text photo and video products.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday announced a range of new audio-only products. Zuckerberg, in a community chat on Discord, gave a product roadmap for how it plans to build out its audio suite in the next 3-6 months. Speaking to independent journalist Casey Newton, Zuckerberg laid out Facebook’s plans to build out its audio suite. Zuckerberg noted that Facebook’s goal is to build audio products that will be as strong as it text, photo and video products. "At a high-level picture here, we think audio is also going to be a first-class medium," he said. The audio products will include audio version of Rooms, which will be similar to Clubhouse. Facebook audio products will also feature soundbites which is a short-form audio product that will feature a stream of brief clips. Zuckerberg noted that soundbites will be like an audio version of Reels, a short video format that was introduced by Facebook last year. Users will be able to share individual clips to their News Feeds, or they can consume a string of audio clips joined together and algorithmically distributed in a feed.