With the advent of new platforms that use audio as their primary means of communication, Facebook is now planning to follow suit. So there should also be audio status messages in the future. But is that a good idea?
At the beginning of the 21st century, Facebook was one of the pioneers that made the global social media triumphant advance possible. In the meantime, the social network has become indispensable and dominates the market as a big player. Nevertheless, more and more other platforms are increasingly attracting users and trying to shake Facebook’s throne. Users are more likely to migrate from Facebook. The young audience in particular seems to be more on TikTok and Instagram. In addition, networks are emerging that rely on audio as the primary means of communication. It goes without saying that Mark Zuckerberg is also closely monitoring this development – and that is why he now wants to integrate sound on his side . Quite a few, however, are already questioning the future of the main actor in social media.
Facebook will soon also be using audio
“We believe audio will be a world-class medium and there are a lot of products that can be built across that spectrum,” Zuckerberg recently told journalist Casey Newton. What is interesting is that he made this statement about Discord – a new app entirely focused on audio chat, offering users rooms and conversations where anyone can communicate by recording audio messages. Similar to the drop-in audio platform Clubhouse. It was already known that Zuckerberg uses Discord in addition to the WhatsApp alternative Signal , but the fact that he gave his interview this way makes it clear: He comes to the party very late.
According to a report by Forbes, Zuckerberg’s company is investing in the Audio Creator Fund , which is similar to other platforms like TikTok and Snapchat. These platforms pay content creators by calculating how much is shared. The more views, the better. Of course, this primarily attracts influencers – and thus also attracts younger users to the platform. On the other hand, everyone is allowed to upload audio recordings , which creates rooms similar to those on Discord or Clubhouse.
Does Facebook Audio end up going as fast as it came?
However, given the failure of Facebook’s video platform , there are doubts as to whether the company will now be successful with this audio idea. Five years ago, developers started investing in video content and the Facebook Watch platform, even luring some brands away from YouTube. The problem is that the idea never caught on. It was even found that Facebook overestimated some publishers’ video metrics and altered their numbers to get more shared than it actually was – which ended up sparking some lawsuits.
The truth is that while Facebook Watch is used by the platform’s subscribers, the performance is minimal compared to YouTube. Even the short videos can’t compete with TikTok or Instagram Reels. So the bottom line is that Facebook has remained a text platform – and only remains relevant through text. This could be a problem, especially for influencers. A unique new platform that is focused on audio from the start and does not have to re-implement anything has it easier.
It is not yet known when these new audio options will come on Facebook. But one thing is clear: every second is worth gold – and nobody knows that better than Mark Zuckerberg.
