Following Clubhouse’s latest fundraiser, Reddit officially unveiled its Clubhouse rival, Reddit Talk, following a recent report from Mashable that revealed that the company had developed audio-based social networking features. Like many of the newly released Clubhouse clones, Reddit’s voice chat experience didn’t detract much from Clubhouse’s overall design, where the speakers sit at the top of the screen in a stage area, and listeners appear below – all with rounded profile icons, plus tools to react or raise a hand to ask to speak.
However, in the case of Reddit, he remade this Clubhouse-style format for his own communities, known as subreddits. Initially, Reddit Talk will live in subreddits, which are individual forums focused on a specific topic or topic. The moderators of that community will be the only ones who can start a discussion for now, because the audio function is still being tested, says Reddit.
These moderators will receive tools that allow them to invite users to join, disable participants, and remove speakers during live sessions. They can also completely ban unwanted users from talking and prevent them from joining again.
Although only subreddit moderators can start discussions once they are in progress, they can invite anyone who chooses to join them to speak. Other users can listen to Reddit Talk sessions on both iOS and Android.
Image credits: Reddit
While the overall style is very similar to the Clubhouse, Reddit has added its own touches. For example, users may react to speakers using a different set of emojis than might be found on rival services. Reddit images today showed reactions that included popular Reddit models such as a rocket ship, the Reddit alien and diamond emojis, among others. Reddit says it is currently testing a way moderators can customize the background colors and emojis used in their communities when launching Reddit Talk. They can also change the look of their own avatar to suit the discussion.
Reddit suggests that the new audio features will make sense for things like questions and answers, AMAs, lectures, sports radio-style discussions, community feedback sessions, or even just hangouts.
The company is currently developing other features specifically designed to support AMAs and other types of conversations, she said.
In comments to the Reddit Talk ad, Reddit answered users’ questions about why it was doing this and acknowledged Clubhouse’s similarities.
Image credits: Reddit
“We think there’s more to offer here, allowing users to have real-time voice chats with others in their communities – maybe talking about a sporting event while on TV or listening to a casual or AMA conversation with field experts. Reddit’s Product Lead for Creators wrote. “Yes, there are a few different platforms that are immersed in live sound right now. We hope that by announcing this early with a design for the first community, we will see captivating conversations hosted first by moderators, with whom we will work closely to ensure that we create a unique, supportive and positive user experience. ” comment read.
There are more than a few “few” platforms that are now building Clubhouse clones right now, of course. Facebook has several tools on the way, Twitter has Spaces and there are audio platforms in various stages of development, from Discord, Telegram, Spotify and even LinkedIn, in the works.
Reddit Talk is not publicly available because it is in a trial period. But community moderators can join a waiting list to be warned when they can try the feature themselves. After the trial period, Reddit says it will work with moderators to allow other trusted users to host discussions through the new feature.