Ability to enable video and record conferences
“With Hotline, we hope to understand how multimedia, interactive, live Q&A sessions can help people learn from experts. It also helps experts grow their business,” Facebook detailed.
Unlike Clubhouse, there will be the option to enable video and the conferences will be recorded. The organizer will receive a digital copy. The application is thus building a more professional and calibrated image, less spontaneous and nebulous than the rising star of social networks, which has made large-scale intimacy its credo.
Live video and audio features already extended to Facebook and Instagram
The experimentation is being conducted by a Facebook research and development group led by Erik Hazzard, who joined Facebook when the California-based group acquired its “tbh” Q&A app.
“We’re experimenting with multimedia products like CatchUp (audio calling app), Venue, (Q&A app), Collab and BARS (collaborative music apps) and it’s encouraging to see how these formats help people connect with each other and form communities,” added Emilie Haskell, a communications manager at Facebook.
Under the influence of the video conferencing service Zoom and then Clubhouse, Facebook has already multiplied and expanded live video and audio features on the network and on Instagram. The Californian group is also developing a rival to Clubhouse within Messenger “rooms”.