Facebook Live Audio Rooms are beginning their rollout today. The ability to create and host rooms is currently limited to public figures, and a handful of high-profile Facebook groups.
You can join in with chats using either iOS or Android apps, but you’ll need to be an iPhone user to host rooms, as this requires the main Facebook iOS app …
Background
Audio chat platform Clubhouse created a storm when high-profile users like Tesla founder Elon Musk and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg generated enough interest to see millions of downloads of the iOS app. Unfortunately for the app, its USP didn’t remain unique for long, as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Spotify, and Telegram all spotted an opportunity to jump onboard with their own offerings.
The first reports of what would become Facebook Live Audio Rooms date back to February, and reverse engineering the following month gave us a good idea of what we were going to see. We also learned that Facebook was working on two other audio products – including podcasts.
Facebook Live Audio Rooms
TechCrunch reports on today’s launch.
Today, Facebook is officially rolling these products with the launch of Live Audio Rooms in the U.S. on iOS, starting with public figures and select Facebook Groups, and the debut of an initial set of U.S. podcast partners.
The company tells us Live Audio Rooms will become available to any verified public figure or creator in the U.S. who’s in good standing with Facebook and is using either a profile or the new Facebook Pages experience on iOS. For Facebook Groups, the feature is launching with “dozens of groups,” we’re told.
Both products will become more broadly available in the weeks and months ahead, as more people, podcasts, and Groups are brought on board. Meanwhile, 100% of Facebook users in the U.S. will be able to listen to Live Audio Rooms and podcasts as of this week.
The site provides a look at how the service works.
The event’s hosts appear in rounded profile icons at the top of the screen, while the listeners appear in the bottom half of the screen, as smaller icons. The active speaker is indicated with a glowing ring. If verified, a check appears next to their name, as well.
There are also options for enabling live captions, a “raise hand” tool to request to speak, and tools to share the room with others on Facebook, through things like News Feed or Group posts […]
Hosts are able to invite people to join them as a speaker in advance of the session, or they can choose listeners during the stream to join them. In each session, there can be up to 50 speakers and there’s no limit on the number of listeners, Facebook says.
During the session, users will be notified when friends or followers join the chat, too.
Facebook also announced its first podcasts.
These include Joe Budden of The Joe Budden Podcast; “Jess Hilarious” of Carefully Reckless from The Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio; Keltie Knight, Becca Tobin, and Jac Vanek of The LadyGang; and Nicaila Matthews Okome of Side Hustle Pro. Facebook will open up to other podcasters this summer.
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