Facebook Reportedly Eying Clubhouse Clone For Its Next Trick

While Facebook displaced many of the old friends-centric social networks like MySpace, Friendster, and other forgotten names, it hasn't exactly cornered all the social markets, at least not by itself. It had to resort to different strategies to compete with the likes of Snapchat, sometimes making controversial acquisitions that are now under regulatory and legal scrutiny. Sometimes, though, it just simply copies those features, which is allegedly the strategy it will use to compete with fledgling social media platform Clubhouse.

Clubhouse is an up and coming platform that is garnering wide appeal in small circles, despite its limited availability, both in terms of being only on iPhones and requiring an invite. It has caught the attention of investors and the who's who of Silicon Valley. Unsurprisingly, that included Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg who may already be planning how to clone the service.

In an age of video conferences and messaging services, Clubhouse bucks the trend by wholeheartedly embracing an oft-forgotten communication medium, voice-only chats. Clubhouse lets you setup rooms, big or small, where groups of people can either just listen-in or even actively participate. The platform has recently been used by big names in tech like Elon Musk and Zuckerberg to reach people, often through interviews.

The New York Times reports that Facebook's chief may have been so smitten by Clubhouse that the company's executives directed to start developing a similar product. Of course, Facebook could spin it simply as the next logical step in offering venues for interaction and communication after text and video. Facebook isn't the only social media giant interested in cloning Clubhouse either as Twitter has been working on its Spaces counterpart.

Then again, Facebook could also simply just buy up Clubhouse even before it has the chance to become a rival, like Instagram and WhatsApp years ago. It might, however, be more cautious about such high-profile acquisitions as it remains under a microscope for alleged anti-competitive practices.