Facebook on Wednesday performed its first public beta test of the Hotline – a web-based question and answer platform that seems to have been dreamed up in response to the platform the current voice chat application mania.
More exactly, Hotline is designed to function as a kind of baby love between Instagram Live and Clubhouse, TechCrunch rEPORTS: The creators will address a user audience, who will then be able to answer by asking questions with either text or sound. Unlike the clubhouse – which is strictly a audio only platform – Hotline users will have the option to turn on the cameras during events, adding a visual element to an otherwise voice-dominated experience.
The hotline is currently being developed by The NPE team from Facebook, which deals with the experimental development of applications within the company and is led of Eric Hazzard, who created the question-and-answer application focused on positivity, which the Facebook acqused before pivoting the Hotline.
A the live broadcast of the app’s functionality on Wednesday was led by real estate investor Nick Huber, who he talked about Industrial real estate as a second stream of income – which should give you a pretty good idea about exactly what kind of “creators” The hotline will try to network after it is active. Close observers of the flow will I noticed that the Hotline interface is very similar to that of the Clubhouse, in that the speaker icon it is located above or in the middle of an “audience”, which is populated by listeners whose profiles appear below the live stream (in the desktop version, the audience is on the side).
Where the app differs from Clubhouse is in its functionality for “audience” members, who will see the questions they ask appear in a list at the top of the feed that other users can choose vote or negative. The creator will also have the option to pull listeners on “deerand ” to join them in a back and forth direction, which will be somewhat closer to Zoom in nature than its audio-only ancestors.
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In a statement Wednesday, Facebook declined to provide specific details about a launch date for the Hotline, but said the developers were encouraged to see how new multimedia features and formats „continue to help people connect and build community.”
“With Hotline, we hope to understand how interactive, live Q & As multimedia can help people learn from experts in areas such as professional skills, as well as help these experts build their businesses,” a Facebook said the spokesman.