Instagram is working on its own Clubhouse-like audio chat rooms, according to a well-known mobile leaker. The platform has just launched Live Rooms, which allow up to four users to video broadcast to an audience in a similar way to Clubhouse. Were the audio rooms to launch, they would mark a departure from Instagram’s usual photo and video-focused content.
Launched originally as a photo-sharing app, Instagram has been developed with zeal by Facebook since it was acquired in 2012. In addition to its Snapchat-like Stories and TikTok-like Reels features, an entirely new Shopping section has been added to the app. While the functionality to broadcast live with other users would arguably have been added anyway at some point, its branding as Live Rooms feels very much like a response to the explosive popularity of Clubhouse.
It’s with that in mind that Alessandro Paluzzi’s tweet showing a microphone icon alongside a video icon for going live on a profile is perhaps not entirely surprising. Facebook’s modus operandi is very much to reappropriate good ideas that it spots elsewhere and try them itself on the platforms it owns. Indeed, it’s rumored to be working on a Clubhouse-like feature of its own. It’s not the only one, of course, with the beta version of Spaces giving Twitter’s spin on the Clubhouse audio chat format.
Instagram Audio Rooms: How Would They Work?
Firstly, it’s important to note that the audio rooms feature that appears to be shown is in development and may never make it to the live app. It might be an idea that Instagram plays around and decides against. However, if it does go live, the question of what to show to users on what is otherwise a visual app would need to be addressed.
At present, the icon is shown by itself and not as part of another feature, suggesting it is envisaged as a feature of its own. This would mean that when users enter a room they could be shown a speakers and audience list like on Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces. That could feel quite static and not as slick as Instagram’s usual visual approach, but perhaps there would be a way for content from speakers’ feeds to be used.
It could also mean users might then have to stay in a room in order to keep listening and would be unable to browse elsewhere, but this would jar with the more dynamic way users browse Instagram. An alternative and more elegant solution would be for the audio track of the room to be minimized were a user to navigate away from it so that they could keep listening as they browse other content on Instagram. This sort of approach is used by Soundcloud, among others.
