The concept of live chat rooms and podcasts is gradually picking up the pace and now Facebook apparently wants a share of the growing pie. The social network is now reported to be working on a new audio chat product similar to audio-based social network Clubhouse.

The audio-chat iOS app Clubhouse has been slowly growing in popularity since its launch in early 2020. Luckily, the app blew up last week when the mogul Elon Musk stopped by for a conversation with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev. Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg had also popped in recently for a chat and the traction has been growing ever since.

However, it seems like Zuckerberg will be sticking around the app for long since Clubhouse will soon be his competitor. According to The New York Times, Facebook has asked developers to build the company’s own chat service, which is reportedly in the early stages of development.

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This comes hours after Twitter also confirmed its plans to have a similar service as a feature. So, it is pretty clear that Clubhouse will have a lot on its hands to try and compete with these huge companies that are (ahem) have a long history of “borrowing” ideas from others.

Clubhouse is available for access only for the people who have its invites. On the other hand, Twitter’s Spaces has just been expanded to 3,000 more people in addition to the initial 1,000 testers.

This new service from Facebook will also be entering a space that seems to be untapped but is certainly growing thanks to the recently launched Stereo. This app also features audio chat rooms but has proven to be quite different by bringing in the concept of live podcasts/ chat rooms. Unlike Clubhouse, Stereo is available on both Android and iOS.