Facebook does podcasts

[Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( Hi folks, Naomi here. Facebook Inc. is the latest giant tech company to charge into the social audio market. On Monday morning, the company announced in a blog post that it will start rolling out a suite of audio products, its first foray into what’s become a crowded pool of aural offerings.  To start, Facebook has launched a slate of podcasts and added a feature called Live Audio Rooms. As of Monday, public figures will be able to host discussions on Facebook featuring their friends, followers or other users with a verified badge.  For now, only famous people and select groups based in the U.S. will be able to create a room. That will include National Football League quarterback Russell Wilson, who plans to talk about mental fitness among elite athletes, and Grammy-nominated electronic music artist TOKiMONSTA, who will chat about “female excellence and overcoming obstacles,” the company said. Facebook has also tapped some existing podcasters and internet celebrities for its initial roster of podcasts. And later, the company plans to introduce a product called “soundbites,” which will allow users to post short audio snippets to their feed like they would a photo or video. How will it make money? There will be no advertising in Live Audio Rooms, but listeners can pay to send their discussion hosts "Stars," which can be traded in for cash. Those who do send Stars will be highlighted in a special “front row” section that everyone will be able to see, according to Facebook. Facebook takes a cut of the money users pay for Stars. Facebook’s push into the audio trend may be splashy, but in the tech world it’s a late arrival. The podcast boom started years ago, egged on by the popularity of the hit series Serial. Earlier this year, the invite-only audio platform Clubhouse was the hottest ticket in Silicon Valley. In April, the startup held talks about raising money at a $4 billion valuation. Quickly, other tech companies piled on. Microsoft Corp.’s LinkedIn and Salesforce.com Inc.’s Slack are working on their own audio room competitors. Twitter offers Twitter Spaces, which function like live audio rooms. And last week, Spotify announced its live audio offering [called Greenroom](. All these services will face steep competition—a plight that may be worsened by the gradual loosening of Covid-19 restrictions. People are increasingly returning to offline activities for their social and entertainment needs. Clubhouse downloads exceeded 9 million in May, but had sunk to less than a million in April. However, after the company added a version of the app for Android phones, downloads climbed again. According to SensorTower data, Clubhouse had reached about 5.3 million downloads in the first 15 days of June alone. It is, of course, possible that the audio craze fades away, or gets relegated to a stable but unexciting corner of the global tech industry. But there’s a compelling intimacy to audio that can appeal to people in ways that video, text and other digital communications tools just don’t. Even old-fashioned radio shows still entrance listeners. The product is classic, even if the delivery mechanisms are anything but. —[Naomi Nix](mailto:nnix1@bloomberg.net) If you read one thing A startup from venture capitalist Keith Rabois wants to buy your favorite Shopify storefront. [Rabois’s new company, OpenStore,]( uses algorithms to make automated bids on small e-commerce operations. The company is jumping on the roll-up trend, in which investors buy multiple storefronts that operate on e-commerce sites and then combine them in an attempt to make them more valuable. Paid Post  When Ransomware Strikes, Darktrace Fights Back Autonomous Response is the only technology that takes targeted action to interrupt ransomware, without disrupting business activity. Discover how to protect your organization from machine-speed attacks. [Learn more >](   Darktrace And here’s what you need to know in global technology news A group of former Morgan Stanley traders in Hong Kong have turned their cryptocurrency venture into [a unicorn](. Real estate mogul Frank McCourt, owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, has a $100 million [plan to save the internet](. (It involves blockchain.) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing makes 92% of the world’s most sophisticated chips, the Wall Street Journal [reported](, posing risks to the global economy. Michael Burry of “Big Short” fame warned that crypto and meme stock speculation will precipitate the “[mother of all crashes](.” Like Fully Charged? | [Get unlimited access to Bloomberg.com](, where you'll find trusted, data-based journalism in 120 countries around the world and expert analysis from exclusive daily newsletters. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Fully Charged newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Bloomberg.com]( | [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022