Facebook Officially Launched New Features in US; Live Audio Rooms and Podcasts

In April 2021, Facebook declared its new and planned investments in the new audio products, comprising Clubhouse live audio competitors as well as a new assistance for podcasts. Now Facebook officially rolling out these products with a fresh launch of Live Audio Rooms in the US, on iOS, initially opening with public figures and select Facebook Groups and the debut of an initial set of US podcast partners.

These Live Audio Rooms are accessible to any public figure or creator in the US, if they owned a verified account, and they should be in good standing with Facebook and confirm either a profile or new Facebook pages experiences on iOS. Actually, this feature is launching with dozens of groups.

We can expect the availability of both products in a more broadly manner in the time ahead, as a number of people, podcasts and Groups are brought on board. All Facebook users in US are enabled to listen in Live Audio Rooms and podcasts, as they provide more standard set of features.

At the top of the screen, the event’s hosts will appear in the rounded profile icons, while the whole listeners will appear in the bottom of half of the screen as smaller icons. Here an active speaker indicates a glowing ring and if verified, a check will appear next to their name.

‘Raise hand’ tool helps to give request for speaking and tools to share the room with others on Facebook through things like Group posts and News Feed. There is no limit on the number of listeners, as each session can be up to 50 speakers. Here, hosts are able to invite people to join with them as speakers in advance of the beginning of the session. Moreover, they can choose listeners during the stream to join them.

During the session, the users easily notified to the joining of friends or followers to the chat. Users can ‘Like’ or react to a particular content as it streams using the ‘Thumbs Up’ button at the bottom of the screen, and able to send a set of emoji reactions too.

‘Stars’ are also used by listeners to exhibit their support to the public figure of the Live Audio Room. By sending ‘Stars’, the listener will be bumped up to the ‘Font Row’, which a section that highlights the people who send ‘Stars’. This setting enables to effortlessly identify their great supporters and even gift them a shout-out during the event, if they select.

Another encouraging new feature permits hosts to choose a non-profit or fundraiser to support during conversation, and speakers and listeners can directly donate. The progress bar will indicate how much has been raised during that show. All these new updates on Facebook can now be used by business people and others as great Facebook marketing strategies. These types of fresh features can be used as the best ideas to better expand any start-up.

All Facebook Group admins are authorized to control whether group members, moderators or other admins can start a Live Audio Room. The rooms are extremely limited to the group members, as both members and visitors are able to listen to the rooms in public and private groups. News Feed and Notifications make all Facebook users alerted to all new Live Audio Rooms and if a room goes live, they can sign up to be reminded. These rooms are also discoverable within Facebook groups.

Now Facebook groups also trying on new formats include Dance Accepts Everyone, Vegan Soul Food, Meditation Matters, Pow Wow Nation, OctoNation – The Largest Octopus Fan Club! and Space Hipsters. Facebook also switching to roll out its planned podcast support with some select creators including 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.

In reality, these new podcasts service is highly unique from the launched music and podcasts player in partnership with Spotify, which allows users to share content from Spotify to the social network. But this new feature implicates podcasts that are streamed through public RSS feeds directly on Facebook and not delivered by Spotify. Moreover, that, the mini player in both podcasts on Facebook and Spotify are similar in look, but not the same.

Facebook’s new podcast listening experience permits users to listen to podcasts as they browse, either in a mini player or full screen player with easy playback options, and even if the display of your phone is turned off. A significant thing pointing here is that as a native podcast streaming app, Facebook allows people, listen to audio without demanding another service, likes Spotify or Apple podcasts.

With the launch of podcast service, the company is inquiring podcast creators to give it permission to cache their content on Facebook servers, just to ensure it doesn’t violate Facebook’s Community Standards. According to the podcast Terms of Service, creators are granting the right to build ‘derivative works’ on Facebook. Now creators are looking forward to launching its new one, Soundbites, which are short forms and creative audio clips.

Attempts are being made here to make Facebook more useful to the business through new features than how Clubhouse helps business entrepreneurs. However, most successful businesses can also use the Clubhouse to reap more attention in the society. Here Facebook has introduced features like Clubhouse live audio and aiming to be more effective to people than it. Facebook podcast service is also in a way the most vital feature in this area. They are always attempting to come up with new features that will shock the competitors.

Facebook claims this new destination will be a place where all the multiple audio formats across Facebook are available, not just podcasts, and will assist the whole users to uncover fresh things and people listen to. It was thriving that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hosted the first trial of the new service in the US, where other Facebook execs and a few Facebook Gaming Creators were also joined.

Mark Zuckerberg has already appeared on Clubhouse a couple of times to talk the topic ahead of declaring what is, primarily, Facebook’s own Clubhouse competitor. Now Facebook travelling towards the expectation of expanding its audio products globally and attempting to touch the success among people.