You’ve probably heard of Clubhouse by now: the invite-only voice chat app for iOS that’s become so popular that every other major social media platform is trying to copy it. Clubhouse surpassed 13 million downloads (says App Annie) in time for its first anniversary, which was almost two weeks ago on March 17.
Considering the more business-focused audience that Clubhouse seems to attract, you would think that LinkedIn would’ve been one of the first apps to create something to rival it. In truth, it was only recently that LinkedIn revealed its future plans.
LinkedIn Is Testing Audio Features Similar to That of Clubhouse
Five days after app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi leaked Snapchat’s upcoming Remix feature on Twitter, he discovered that LinkedIn is working on live audio rooms.
⚠️ To clarify, in this UI the profile picture of the logged in user is automatically loaded as an avatar for all fake users within it.
They didn’t use a white man as a placeholder 🙄— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) March 30, 2021
It didn’t take much longer for LinkedIn to confirm the suspicion. The company is testing new audio features, and says the experience will be different from other Clubhouse rivals because it will be connected with users’ professional identity on LinkedIn (as opposed to a typical social profile that’s often exaggerated or faked).
“We’re looking at how we can bring audio to other parts of LinkedIn such as events and groups, to give our members even more ways to connect to their community,” said LinkedIn spokesperson Suzi Owens to TechCrunch.
A History of Clubhouse Copycats
Audio chat isn’t a new concept—apps like Discord, Skype, and Zoom have been around for years now—but Clubhouse was the first to kind of “assign” the speaker and listener role to every individual in a voice call. It’s akin to a live podcast, where audience members can occasionally chime in on a conversation being hosted by somebody else.
Twitter seems to be the first major social network that realized the Clubhouse format was going to be a big deal, and so it launched Spaces in December 2020. After that, Facebook confirmed it was working on a rival app last February.
March 2021 has turned into the month of new Clubhouse clones: Instagram is reportedly working on audio rooms, Telegram launched Voice Chats 2.0, and Spotify acquired Betty Labs likely to get in on the action, too.
The LinkedIn Development Team Gets Busy in March
It’s difficult to tell whether live audio rooms is truly the next big thing, or if they’ll only ride this high until the the end of the pandemic. Still, audio features are soon coming to LinkedIn either way.
Also announced on this same day was LinkedIn’s new video cover stories and creator tools! Looks like the employment-oriented platform hopes to make big improvements this year,
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