Facebook said to be building product to compete with audio chat app Clubhouse

San Francisco

FACEBOOK is building an audio chat product that is similar to popular young app Clubhouse, said two people with knowledge of the matter, as the social network aims to expand into new forms of communication.

Social networking app Clubhouse has gained buzz for letting people gather in audio chat rooms to talk about various topics. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, has been interested in audio communication forms, said the sources, and he appeared in the Clubhouse app on Sunday to chat about augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR).

Facebook executives have ordered employees to create a similar product, said the sources, who were not authorised to speak publicly. The product is in its earliest stages of development, they added, and the project's code name could change.

"We've been connecting people through audio and video technologies for many years and are always exploring new ways to improve that experience for people," Emilie Haskell, a Facebook spokesperson, said. A representative for Clubhouse declined to comment.

Facebook has a history of breaking into new technologies and chasing different mediums that attract users, especially if those audiences are young. Mr Zuckerberg bought photo-sharing site Instagram, messaging app WhatsApp and virtual reality company Oculus when all were small startups.

Facebook is also known in Silicon Valley for being willing to clone its competitors. Instagram in 2016 copied one of the marquee features of rival Snapchat - Stories, which allows users to share ephemeral videos and photos. Last year, Instagram debuted Reels, a TikTok-like video product. When teleconferencing service Zoom became popular last year, Facebook quickly created Rooms, a group video-chat service. And this year, Facebook has been working on a competing product to Substack, the popular newsletter service.

Facebook has dabbled in experimental app development through its New Product Experimentation team. The team has worked on podcast apps, travel apps and music apps, among others.

Clubhouse, which was founded last year by entrepreneurs Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, has gained traction among Silicon Valley's elite as a private, invite-only iPhone app. The app is in beta, meaning it is still in a testing stage before a wide release.

After signing up for Clubhouse, users can create rooms dedicated to different topics. Instead of video or text, Clubhouse's preferred medium is voice chat. Room sizes vary from the intimate to thousands of people listening or participating. At times, it works like a hybrid of a citizens band radio and 1980s-era party line.

Clubhouse has flourished in the pandemic as people have searched for ways to connect while remaining physically isolated from one another. The app sits atop Apple's App Store rankings in countries such as Germany, Italy, Japan and Turkey. At a recent internal meeting, Mr Davison and Mr Seth said Clubhouse had two million weekly users. Dozens of celebrities, from Drake and Tiffany Haddish to Jared Leto and a co-founder of Instagram, have appeared on the app.

Investors have noticed. Clubhouse raised US$100 million in January at a US$1 billion valuation, said PitchBook. It was valued last year at US$100 million. Its investors include venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and more than 180 others, the company has said.

Twitter is testing a product, called Spaces, that offers a similar audio chat function.

Tech titans have started occasionally appearing on Clubhouse. Last month, Elon Musk, the world's richest person, agreed to be interviewed by Silicon Valley technologists Sriram Krishnan and Aarthi Ramamurthy, who host a nightly talk show on the app called Good Time. That brought a rush of interest, and Clubhouse struggled to keep its service afloat.

On Sunday, the hosts of Good Time interviewed a Facebook executive when a surprise guest showed up: Mr Zuckerberg, who spoke briefly about the future of AR/VR and Facebook's plans. NYTIMES

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