Reddit’s Clubhouse clone gets recordings and web support

Reddit Talk, the platform’s audio-only chatrooms, now support recordings. As outlined in a post on Reddit’s blog, this means you can now listen to previous talks as well as use playback tools that let you jump to certain timestamps, pause / unpause recordings, and fast-forward or rewind them. This should make it even easier for users to record and distribute live podcast-like sessions.

Image: Reddit

Reddit also announced that it’s expanding Talk to the web and is bringing some handy features (that are already available on mobile) along with it. This includes the ability for listeners to raise their hands to speak and a way for moderators to mute users and remove them as speakers. The platform says it’s rolling out Talk for its desktop app “later this month.”

Image: Reddit

Additionally, the platform is giving listeners the ability to communicate with text and emoji in real time. Before this change, users could only raise their hands when they wanted to speak — adding two additional ways to communicate should make talks more engaging, especially if some users want to make a comment but don’t want to go on the mic.

As a final note, Reddit says it’s testing a “live bar” that will appear at the top of the home feed on mobile, much like the bar Twitter displays if anyone you’re following is in a Space. The bar will show you when live talks are happening and in which communities you follow.

Reddit first introduced Talk last April, and since then, only moderators who join a waitlist have been able to host the audio-only sessions. It doesn’t look like Reddit plans to let regular users take the reins on Talk either. The platform told TechCrunch it has no “plans to extend the live audio feature to Reddit users outside of moderators.” The Verge reached out to Reddit with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

Even still, Reddit seems to be slowly filling out Talk with more features as it attempts to take on Clubhouse (and all those other clones). Both Spaces and Clubhouse already support recordings, so it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that Reddit decided to incorporate the feature as well.