SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook is building an audio chat product similar to the popular young app Clubhouse, according to two knowledgeable people as the social network strives to expand into new forms of communication.
Clubhouse, a social networking app, has gained popularity for letting people congregate in audio chat rooms to talk about a variety of topics. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, was interested in audio communication forms, the knowledgeable said, and appeared on the Clubhouse app on Sunday to talk about augmented and virtual reality.
Facebook executives have instructed employees to create a similar product, said the people who were not authorized to speak in public. The product is in its earliest stages of development, they said.
A Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment, as did a Clubhouse representative.
Facebook has a history of breaking through new technologies and chasing different media that have attracted users, especially when those audiences are young. Mr. Zuckerberg bought the photo sharing site Instagram, the messaging app WhatsApp and the virtual reality company Oculus when they were all small start-ups.
Facebook is also known in Silicon Valley for being willing to clone its competitors. In 2016, Instagram copied one of the main features of rival Snapchat, “Stories,” which allows users to share ephemeral videos and photos. Last year, Instagram debuted “Reels,” a TikTok-esque video product. When the teleconference service Zoom became popular last year, Facebook quickly created Rooms, a group video chat service. And this year, Facebook has been working on a competitive product for Substack, the popular newsletter service.
Facebook has been committed to developing experimental apps through the New Product Experiments 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 iPhone app accessible by invitation only. The app is in “beta”, which means that it is still in a testing phase before being widely released.
After signing up for Clubhouse, users can create rooms dedicated to different topics. Rather than communicating via video or text, Clubhouse’s preferred medium is voice chat. The sizes of the rooms range from the intimate to thousands of people listening or participating. Sometimes it works like a hybrid of a CB radio and an 80s party line.
Clubhouse thrived in the pandemic as people have looked for ways to connect while remaining isolated from each other. The app tops the Apple 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 2 million weekly users.
Dozens of celebrities – from Drake and Tiffany Haddish to Jared Leto and an Instagram co-founder – have appeared on the app, participated in various discussions, and used the service to promote their projects.
Investors have noticed. Clubhouse raised $ 100 million in January at a valuation of $ 1 billion, according to PitchBook. It was valued at $ 100 million last year. Investors include venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and more than 180 others, the company said.
International interest in Clubhouse has increased. On Monday, the app was blocked in China after people there joined from people from Taiwan, Hong Kong and elsewhere to exchange views on topics ranging from political to mundane.
Tech titans occasionally make an appearance on Clubhouse. Last month, Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, agreed to be interviewed on Clubhouse by two users hosting a nighttime talk show through the ‘Good Time’ app. That sparked a surge of interest and Clubhouse struggled to keep its shift afloat.
On Sundays are the hosts of “Good Time” interviewed a Facebook manager when an unexpected guest showed up: Mr. Zuckerberg. He spoke briefly about the future of augmented and virtual reality and Facebook’s plans before leaving to return to his family.