Reddit closes its Clubhouse clone Reddit Talk

After the rise of Clubhouse, every platform rushed to create a clone. But over the past year or so, the format’s popularity has faded and companies are rethinking their priorities. On Wednesday, Reddit announced that it was shutting down its live audio product Reddit Talk on March 21 — two years after its launch.

The company said it needs to do “significant work” before integrating audio into its platform. This basically means that Reddit is shifting its focus to build better search And a TikTok-style feed for video discovery. In a recent interview on the decoder podcast, social network product manager Bali Bhat said more than 500 million people visit Reddit every month. But the company wants to open the platform to more people with these new features.

“Our original plan was to keep Talk alive while we worked on it. Unfortunately, the third-party audio provider we use for Talk is shutting down their service. In other words, the resources needed to keep Talk live during this transition have increased significantly” , Reddit said in a post.

Reddit Talk will be available until March 21, and users will be able to download discussions until June 1, but only if the discussions were hosted after September 22. This will probably avoid high storage costs.

With this sunset, the company is also closing the “Happening Now” page, which allowed users to view active conversations in real time.

The social network first launched Reddit Talk in April 2021. Last year, it launched a web version of the product and even introduces features like improved discovery and soundboard.

Reddit isn’t the only platform rethinking its live audio strategy. Last year Spotify shut down a creative fund for real-time conversations and ended production on several shows. In October, Amazon made job cuts at Amp, an app he launched to boost live radio. Even the popularity of live audio flagship Clubhouse has declined, with the app registering just 200,000 monthly active users, according to a business insider report published in November.