Just when you thought that every major social media platform under the sun had finished announcing some kind of Clubhouse-esque audio broadcast feature, Microsoft steps in and confirms that they’re also testing such functionality with LinkedIn.
“We’re doing some early tests to create a unique audio experience connected to your professional identity,” LinkedIn’s Suzi Owens told TechCrunch earlier today. “And, 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.”
A mockup of what the audio room experience could look like was provided to TC from LinkedIn and, as expected, it looks remarkably similar to the UI used on Clubhouse with active speakers displayed at the top of the screen and listeners shown underneath.
Of course, this image is just a mockup and the final release will likely look different as the functionality and UI is refined and tested.
Clubhouse became incredibly popular a few months ago as it opened up its platform to more users and began hosting live audio discussions by celebrities and popular media personalities. It began to experience stiff competition from more established networks almost immediately, however, with Twitter already testing its own communal audio broadcast feature, Twitter Spaces, at the time of Clubhouse’s launch and Facebook, Instagram, Discord, and even Spotify announcing similar plans for audio broadcasting soon after.
Telegram, the mega-popular privacy-focuses messaging app with over 500 million users, stepped up its group audio feature earlier this month with an update across all of its supported platforms that enabled audio chats with literally millions of potential listeners.
While Clubhouse has been getting a lot of buzz, it’s still restricting itself to an invite-only form of user signups and is limited to an app that’s available only on iOS devices such as the iPhone and iPad. Telegram, meanwhile, already has hundreds of millions of active users and offers apps on all of the main platforms.
Microsoft’s LinkedIn social network is in a similarly strong position to dominate Clubhouse with over 750 million users as of February this year and apps on iOS, Android, and Windows. LinkedIn also has a userbase that’s remarkably similar to that now on Clubhouse which has attracted entrepreneurs, business owners, recruiters, and marketers. It’ll be interesting to see how many make the jump back to LinkedIn whenever it activates this new feature in the months ahead.
What do you think? Are you curious to see what LinkedIn’s voice feature looks like? Do you think it’ll dominate Clubhouse? Share your thoughts with the community in the comments below and then follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more Microsoft news.
