Facebook appears to be losing interest in developing podcasting tools and competing against Clubhouse , according to reports.
In 2021, audio rooms were the new boom for content creators and podcasters. With the arrival of Clubhouse , the implementation of similar spaces on Twitter and Telegram , in addition to other attempts, seemed to be an unstoppable trend. Facebook itself, before becoming Meta, had already announced its plans to venture into this fervent field. A year later, it seems that Meta has not gone well with the plan.
According to Bloomberg , Facebook is rearranging efforts to improve on other opportunities after having added several services to podcasters since April 2021. The decision goes through the refocus of the Meta parent company in spaces such as the metaverse, in addition to its permanent fight in the complex segments of short videos, in which TikTok vastly outperforms its Instagram and Facebook platforms.
The report argues that plans to create a podcaster training program and attract them to this new platform took a backseat, along with the brand’s presence at events like the Podcast Movement in August last year. In addition, Meta announced that the F8 conference will not take place in 2022 either, so it is not really known what direction the company will take outside of the ambitious project of virtuality.
Audio is not profitable for Facebook
Currently, environments such as Twitter Spaces and Clubhouse are still the most powerful within audio rooms, a format that allows people to interact in a virtual “room” designed for a specific theme. Even Telegram is currently used as an audio room.
The most recent move in this segment has been the redesign of Greenroom and its conversion to Spotify Live, the place to listen to live podcasts and interact with content creators from the famous streaming application.
For Facebook, however, this turnaround means a strong opportunity to attract podcasters to a new space of interaction in the metaverse, and plans aim to strengthen this relationship with podcast partners and improve the e-commerce platform. A Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company is seeing good engagement with its audio features and believes that audio is an important medium for expression. Despite mentioning that there is concern about the feedback provided by podcasters all this time, Meta did not elaborate on the matter and whether these responses will serve to improve the current product.