Facebook is Joining the Social Audio Club(house) by Doing What it Does Best: Copying a Competitor
Facebook is notorious for making product innovations cheekily similar to that of its rivals. Some observers refer to this technique as a “Zucking”. The quinessential example of “Zucking” the competition occurred occurred in 2017 when Instagram adopted the 24-hour disappearing story feature — a feature that had first premiered on Snapchat’s platform. Facebook improved on its stories add-ons, including the swipe up feature, music tracks, and e-commerce integrations. It took Snapchat’s great idea and improved upon it. And it worked — brilliantly.
Facebook has not always been successful in copying its competitors. Facebook tried zucking a dating app integration, which had eerily similar functionality to that of Tinder, but it didn’t take off. It also attempted to zuck the gaming live stream space from Twitch but wasn’t able to out-muscle the Amazon-backed streaming darling. Even though the social media giant has faced backlash for these blatant attempts of piggybacking off the success of others, its product design philosophy continues to thrive off the zucking technique.
Undeterred by its reputation for the faux pas, Facebook is set to announce its plans to rollout new social audio features where users can chat with friends, family, and strangers in a large virtual audio chat room. Users will also be able to talk to others on a virtual soapbox and allow friends to post audio messages on feeds. Sound familiar?
Yup, it sounds like Clubhouse! Clubhouse exploded with popularity at the start of 2021 with everyone from celebrities and high schoolers to Silicon Valley VCs and pro athletes joining the app to shoot the shit with people. Clubhouse shined a light on a market that was seemingly underutilized: social audio. It clearly didn’t take Facebook long to notice it the potential for Clubhouse’s product. But, will Facebook’s most recent attempt at unscrupulously copying rival features be successful in making Facebook a name in the audio space?
All the Cool Kids are Doing it!
Facebook isn’t the only company in the tech space that thrives off zucking. Microsoft, Slack, and Twitter have all disclosed that they too are working on incorporating Clubhouse-esque features for their social networks.
The rush to capitalize on a hot trend shouldn’t surprise anyone. The battle for eyeballs and ear(drums?) has been heating up for months. Fueled at first by the Trump-initiated forced sale of TikTok’s US operations, social media is no longer a battle between Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. Even the hallowed software pioneer, Microsoft, flirted with the idea of buying TikTok but ultimately backed out last-minute. Flush with cash, Microsoft would have been in a very good position to make a splash and change its image as a boomer tech company by buying TikTok.
Microsoft made its first foray into social media with its $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016 — a platform that aligns with Microsoft’s traditional image. With the success that Teams has had during the pandemic, Microsoft is wise to look to ways to improve its audio offerings and cherish its time in the spotlight as a winner of the work-from-home transition.
Slack too is unveiling new Clubhouse-like features in beta mode, which will allow users to drop into channels for conversations without requiring meeting invites or initiating calls. The concept seems right up Slack’s alley. It will simulate the feeling of walking into a meeting area at a San Francisco tech company offices — the original tech clubhouses—just virtually.
Twitter, for its part, has been expanding into audio for the last couple years with voice tweets and, most recently, Spaces. Twitter recognizes the special place it holds in the pantheon of social media and Spaces is a clear example of staking its ground in the war for network supremacy. With Spaces, users can host public meetings where anyone can join as a listener, including people who don’t follow the original host. Space allows up to eleven people to speak at any given time and hosts can choose whether to allow anyone to speak or only a select group of people (or followers). Listeners can seek host permission to speak by tapping on the request icon below the microphone.
Twitter’s approach to social audio seems to most closely mirror the new features that Facebook is set to announce this week. It is also a classic example of Zucking; in this case, Twitter’s rollout of Spaces seems to borrow from both Clubhouse and Zoom (and isn’t Zoom just another version of Google Meet or FaceTime or WebEx?). So, I guess, that means Facebook, in turn, is zucking a fellow zucker…whatever it is, it’s clear that Facebook isn’t alone in its envy of Clubhouse’s quick ascendance to fame.
Anti-Trust Concerns, Conspiracy Theory Peddling, Privacy Law Circumventing, And Now This?
What isn’t so clear is why Facebook would want to draw more attention to its ethically dubious business practices with a blatantly obvious attempt to corner the entire social media market with yet another copied feature. Facebook is no stranger to political, legal, and regulatory scrutiny. It has largely come off unscathed from its numerous battles with Congress but is now really the right time to attempt to monopolize yet another niche within the social media space?
With a new administration in the White House, all indications point towards a more difficult four years ahead of Facebook than the previous four it had enjoyed under former president, Donald Trump. Just before Biden’s inauguration, the Federal Trade Commission filed suit against Facebook for anticompetitive practices, alleging a concerted effort on the company’s part to thwart attempts at innovation through its acquisition of Instagram and Whatsapp and making API access conditioned upon agreements not to compete against its core offerings. If successful, the FTC suit could force Facebook to divest itself of or spin-off Instagram as a separate entity.
The FTC complaint cites emails from none other than the king of Zuck — Mark Zuckerberg himself —where he describes his rationale for competition-oriented M&A:
Even if some new competitors spring[] up, buying Instagram, Path, Foursquare, etc now will give us a year or more to integrate their dynamics before anyone can get close to their scale again. Within that time, if we incorporate the social mechanics they were using, those new products won’t get much traction since we’ll already have their mechanics deployed at scale.
Zuckerberg’s email chain also illustrates his rationale for copying his peers: if Facebook doesn’t do it, someone else will. In discussing the Instagram acquisition back in 2011, Zuckerberg mentions that its motivations for rolling out many of its classic features (e.g. News Feed, Timeline, et cetera) were to combat the growing influence that Instagram had on social media users at that time. Instagram’s focus on mobile photo sharing was directly competing with Facebook’s model. Zuckerberg noted it would be a “big strategic risk for us if we don’t completely own the photos space” as allowing Instagram to grow or get acquired by a competitor like Google would open Facebook up to being the victim of corporate copycats.
The very thought of Zuckerberg’s emails worrying about Instagram piggybacking off Facebook’s features to gain an edge being the linchpin that splits Facebook apart through anti-trust is drenching with irony.
Adding these antitrust suits onto its already storied history of mishandling sensitive user data and the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook is unlikely to be cast as a morally upstanding character in the political dramas that lie ahead for the company. And, the United States is just one of many countries that are coming to terms with Facebook’s monopoly over social data. The European Union, for instance, has used regulation to force Facebook to remove features that run afoul of GDPR rules against sensitive data collection.
If this isn’t enough to garner the attention of Congress, Facebook is also under fire internationally for its role in promoting hate speech, conspiracy theories, and other extremist content. Indian regulators are stepping in to place tougher rules on Facebook and imposing a grievance mechanism for arbitrating disputes over content that is taken off Facebook’s platform. Similar pushes for regulation are being contemplated in Canada and Australia, which are embroiled in battles with Facebook over news-sharing laws that would require content distributors (like Facebook) to compensate content creators for their work when shared on the formers’ platforms.
With all the bad press circulating and all the legal and political skirmishes brewing ahead, is jumping hijacking Clubhouse’s idea really a priority for Facebook at this particular moment?
Your friend Spotify has invited you to join Clubhouse
One way to deflect negativity in social situations is to find an ally — preferably one that is well liked by everyone in the room. Facebook has done just that by partnering with Spotify — one of the most beloved brands worldwide — to help bolster its audio offerings and as a way to break into the original podcasting space.
Facebook is reportedly tapping Spotify to create a podcast discovery tool, which would flag podcasts based on user interests and direct users to Spotify for a seamless click-and-listen experience. Spotify has itself taken jabs at Clubhouse with its recent acquisition of Betty Labs, the maker of sports-focused Locker Room. Spotify has used its user stickiness and brand equity to attract major exclusive deals for the likes of Joe Rogan, Kim Kardashian, Michelle Obama, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Spotify’s friendship with Facebook was not made entirely out of altruism, of course. On top of getting paid for its services, Spotify’s alliance with Facebook on audio strategy is mutually beneficial in their common battle against Apple. In Spotify’s case, the beef with Apple is pretty obvious. For Facebook, however, the Apple fight has been lingering over the years until it erupted in January when Apple announced new privacy features for iOS 14, which require developers to provide a “privacy nutrition label” for their apps.
By teaming up against Apple, the Facebook-Spotify alliance is a classic case of the old dictum: an enemy of my enemy is my friend. But those sorts of “friendships” are always fraught with complications as the business strategies change and priorities shift. Facebook and Spotify have co-existed in the past but Spotify would be foolish to not keep its guard up against the most notorious corporate copy-cat in the business.
What lies ahead…
As with everything in the social media space, the network will be the ultimate judge of whether product level innovations are going to drive increased engagement with platforms. Facebook has historically been successful in zucking its competition but the competition now is much more fierce with the likes of Microsoft, Slack, and Twitter jumping into the social audio space, to name a few. Facebook will also have to balance its push for feature-adding against the consequences of its characteristic cavalier nature towards regulation. And while partnering with Spotify is a great way to improve its image in the eyes of some consumers, it is far from a slam dunk in terms of what it can actually deliver for Facebook in the long run.
