After live-audio platform Clubhouse set the world on fire, every other social media service wanted to get in on the action. This included Facebook, which released its competitor, Live Audio rooms to American users back in June. Now it’s making the feature available worldwide.

Additionally, Live Audio rooms can now be created in group chats. Previously, only creators and public figures could start their own rooms. A group room sounds a lot like a multi-person voice call to us, but we’re not complaining.

Facebook for your ears

The social media platform isn’t done there. It seems audio is the way forward, and Facebook is on board.

Firstly, it’s rolling out Soundbites, appropriately named short-form audio clips shared to users’ News Feeds. According to The Verge, Mark Zuckerberg described them as the audio-equivalent to Instagram’s Reels which… seems about right. Soundbites aren’t available just yet, but have tested well with creators and should hit our Feeds within a few weeks.

The company’s working on podcast support too. Podcasts were made available via Facebook in the US earlier this year, but the company has plans to bring this feature to users globally in the long term. What work it has done on its podcast offerings has been towards integration, with US users now able to share podcast clips to their Feeds. Casters themselves are now able to add their RSS feeds to their Facebook pages directly, for ease of distribution.

Again, these tools are only available to US users, but hey, they’re something to look forward to while we wait for podcasts to land on our side.

Source: TechCrunch