TikTok owner is working on its own version of Clubhouse
According to a source with reference to the Reuters news agency, ByteDance, known for its social network TikTok, is preparing a competitor of the Clubhouse application. Reuters refers to its insiders familiar with the situation.
Recall that the original Clubhouse application in China was banned in early February and after that many local companies decided to make an alternative. Earlier this was announced by Xiaomi, and now something similar is being prepared at ByteDance. The project is reportedly still at an early stage of implementation, but given the experience of the developers, the company will be able to complete work on the application quickly enough. ByteDance itself has not yet commented on these rumors.
Mi Talk: Xiaomi launches its Clubhouse for Android and iPhone
Xiaomi has taken strange actions with regard to its communication service Xiaomi Mi Talk. Just a week after the official closure, the messenger is reviving again, but in a different form.
On the day the messenger closed, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun started a discussion with followers on Weibo. Now 140 million have read the topic and 130 million have participated in the discussion. During the discussion, the top manager mentioned that the company plans to launch a new interactive application in 2021.
Gizchina News of the week
On the evening of February 26, the Xiaomi Mi Talk team made an interesting statement: “Mi Talk, start again”, and now the messenger is launched again, but in an updated form. The service is reportedly now a voice chat for professionals. In fact, Xiaomi is creating its competitor to the social network Clubhouse, which has gained explosive popularity lately.
This will be a completely new product – there are no plans to transfer accounts and data from the original messenger. Initially, a small number of users will receive invitations for closed testing. Others will be able to register and wait for an invitation.
Versions for Android and iOS are already ready. In the Chinese app store, the new Xiaomi service appeared on the day of the official closing of Mi Talk, but it is still at an early stage of development and is available only to those who have not only an invitation, but also a registered mobile phone of a Xiaomi employee.
Twitter adds Spaces on Android in light of Clubhouse’s popularity
So far, Twitter Spaces stayed only on iOS together with a host of iOS-exclusive features such as voice tweets. However, the feature already reached the hands of a lot of users, even though it’s only in “test mode” according to Twitter. In the same way, the feature seems to be reaching some Android users right now. Despite being on “beta” testing, Twitter seems to be shipping this feature randomly to some users. Users have specifically reported that the feature is working for them after installing a specific beta version of the Twitter application.
Since the rollout for Android is not yet available for the stable version; it’s safe to say that this feature still is in its early stage. According to Android Police’s coverage, the captions are somewhat messy in this beta. Moreover, you can’t start your own space, only join others’ spaces, which is a bit weird. Despite the rough state of this function, it is good to see that Twitter is close to releasing a valid Clubhouse alternative for its avid users.
So far, Clubhouse is only available for those who receive an invite. This currently limits the number of users on the platform. Big giants of technology are starting to ship their alternatives. For that reason, believe that Clubhouse needs to be available to the wide public very soon. After all, one of these big companies can easily “eat” Clubhouse’s users if it manages to ship a solid and better app.