Facebook officially launches Live Audio Rooms and podcasts in the U.S. – ProWellTech

In April, Facebook announced a number of planned investments in new audio products, including a clubhouse live audio competitor, as well as new support for podcasts. Today Facebook is officially launching these products with the launch of Live Audio Rooms in the US on iOS, starting with public figures and select Facebook groups and debuting a first line of US podcast partners.

The company tells us that Live Audio Rooms are available to any verified public figure or creator in the US who have a good reputation on Facebook and either have a profile or the new experience with facebook pages on iOS. For Facebook groups, the function will start with “dozens of groups”, it is said.

Both products will be more widely available in the coming weeks and months as more people, podcasts and groups get on board. Meanwhile, starting this week, 100% of Facebook users in the US will be able to listen to Live Audio Rooms and Podcasts.

Similar to Clubhouse or similar audio apps, Facebook’s Live Audio Rooms offer a range of standard functions.

The event hosts appear in rounded profile icons at the top of the screen, while the listeners appear as smaller icons in the lower half of the screen. The active loudspeaker is indicated by a glowing ring. Once confirmed, a check mark will also appear next to their name.

There are also options to enable live closed captioning, a tool to raise your hand to request speaking, and tools to share the room with others on Facebook, such as: B. via news feed or group posts.

Facebook does things a little differently than others in some places. For example, hosts can invite people to join them as speakers before the meeting, or they can select listeners to join them during the stream. There can be up to 50 speakers in each session and there is no limit to the number of listeners, Facebook says.

During the session, users will also be notified when friends or followers join the chat.

While listening, users can “like” or respond to the content as it is streamed using the “thumbs up” button at the bottom of the screen that links you to Facebook’s emoji reactions. And with today’s official launch, listeners can now also support the personality of the Live Audio Room by “Stars. ”These stars can be purchased during the conversation and used at any time, similar to how they work with other Facebook Live content.

Sending stars takes the listener to “Front Row,” a special section that highlights the people who broadcast the stars. This way, the hosts of the event can easily spot their supporters and even greet them during the event if they so choose.

Another new feature allows hosts to choose a nonprofit or fundraiser to support during their conversation, and listeners and speakers can donate directly. A progress bar shows how much was collected during the show.

In the meantime, administrators for Facebook groups can control whether moderators, group members, or other administrators can create a live audio room. Both members and visitors can listen to the rooms in public groups, but in private groups the rooms are limited to group members.

Facebook users will be alerted to all new live audio rooms via the news feed and notifications and can log in to be reminded when a room they are interested in goes live. Live audio rooms can also be found in Facebook groups, if available.

The Grammy-nominated electronic music artist was one of the first to use the Facebook Live Audio Rooms TOKiMONSTA; American football quarterback Russell Wilson; Organizer, producer and independent journalist Rosa Clemente; Streamer and digital entertainer Omareloff; and social entrepreneur Amanda Nguyen. More are planned for the near future D smoke, Kehlani, Reggie Watts, and Lisa Morales Duke, to Dr. Jess, Bobby Berk, Tina Knowles-Lawson, Joe Budden (especially Spotify’s first big podcast star who it lost last year), and DeRay McKesson.

Facebook groups trying out the new format include Dance Accepts Everyone, Vegan Soul Food, Meditation Matters, Pow Wow Nation, OctoNation – The Largest Octopus Fan Club! and space hipsters.

In addition to the introduction of Live Audio Rooms, Facebook is also starting to roll out its planned podcast support with a few selected YouTubers. These include Joe Budden the Joe Budden podcast; “Jess hilarious“By Carefully Reckless of 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.

To be clear, this new podcast service is different from the music and podcast player recently launched in partnership with Spotify, which allows users to share content from Spotify on the social network. The new feature is instead podcasts that are streamed directly to Facebook via public RSS feeds rather than being delivered by Spotify. However, the mini-player for podcasts on Facebook will look and behave similarly to the mini-player for Spotify audio integration (aka Project Boombox). But they are not the same.

With the new podcast listening experience, users can listen to podcasts while browsing Facebook, either in a mini-player or full-screen player with playback options and even when the phone’s display is off. This makes Facebook a native podcast streaming app in a way, as it allows people to listen to audio without needing any other service – like Spotify or Apple Podcasts, for example.

Facebook had previously said that there are over 170 Facebook users connected to a page for a podcast, demonstrating users’ interest in podcasts on its social network.

With the launch of the Facebook podcast service, the company is Ask permission from the podcast creator to temporarily store their content on the Facebook servers, which is communicated to us in order to ensure that the content does not violate Facebook’s community standards. However, because the podcasts continue to be streamed via RSS feeds, they are represented in the metrics of a podcaster’s hosting provider.

Last week, Facebook sent an email Podcast site owners will learn how to set up their show on Facebook, and note that they can link their podcast’s RSS feed to automatically generate news feed posts for their episodes. These are also featured on their page on the Podcasts tab. According to Facebook Podcast Terms of UseIts creators grant Facebook the right to create “derivative works,” which likely relates to an upcoming clip feature.

Facebook says later this summer that it will add the ability to create and share short clips from a podcast along with other features like closed captioning. In the longer term, it will also create social experiences around podcasts. It is also working with creators to develop and launch its new product, Soundbites, which are short, creative audio clips. This will start later in 2021.

Other audio products in the works include a central listening goal and listening to background audio for videos.

Facebook says this new destination will be a place where all different audio formats are available on Facebook, not just podcasts, and will help users find new things and people to listen to. More details on this project will be announced later this summer.

Until today Facebook calm checked Live audio rooms in Taiwan and in-house with Facebook staff These tests will continue. Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hosted the first trial of the new service in the US, where he was joined by fellow Facebook managers and some Facebook gaming creators.

Zuckerberg is optimistic about the potential for audio across the social networking platform. He even made a couple of appearances at the clubhouse to discuss the matter before announcing Facebook’s essentially own clubhouse competitor.

“I think the areas I look forward to most on Facebook are basically in the large number of communities and groups that exist,” Zuckerberg had said Platformer, at the time of the original announcement. “I think you already have these communities that are organized by interests and allow people to come together and have spaces to talk to – I think it would be a very useful thing,” he added.

Facebook expects to expand its audio products worldwide in the coming months.