The success of the invite-only, year-old app Clubhouse,
which has reported 10 million weekly active users, has demonstrated the
potential of audio chat services, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Twitter Inc has been testing its audio feature Spaces and Facebook is also
dabbling with a live audio room offering within its Messenger Rooms.Hotline
comes from a small group within Facebook, called the New Product
Experimentation (NPE) Team, which is tasked with building small social media
apps from scratch.
A Facebook spokeswoman said Hotline was aimed at “knowledge
experts” who could share tips from different fields like finance or health. She
said the team is exploring how users’ questions might be “upvoted.”The
application does not currently have any audience size limits. Hosts are able to
remove questions from the queue and Facebook said it is moderating
inappropriate content in these early tests.
Hotline events are automatically recorded and hosts are
given copies of the recordings. The spokeswoman said it was too early to tell
how creators might make money from Hotline events.Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
recently joined a Clubhouse event to talk about the importance of the creator
economy.
NPE is also testing Super, a video app where users can pay
to meet influencers, ask them questions and capture a ‘selfie’ picture in live
events. The team previously tested an audio-calling app called CatchUp, which
was shut down last year.
Hotline is not currently a standalone app and Facebook said
it is testing different authentication methods so users may join the events
through Twitter, Facebook-owned Instagram or by providing phone numbers.
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