Reddit is getting rid of its copy of Clubhouse. Reddit Talk

When Clubhouse became very popular, every platform rushed to make a copy of it. But in the last year or so, the format has become less popular, and companies are rethinking what they should focus on. Reddit announced on Wednesday that its live audio service, Reddit Talk, will end on March 21, two years after it first started.

Before adding sound to its platform, the company said it needs to do “significant work.” This means that Reddit is putting more effort into making better search and a feed for finding videos like the one on TikTok. In a recent podcast interview, Bali Bhat, the chief product officer of a social network, said that more than 500 million people visit Reddit every month. But the company wants these new features to make the platform available to more people.

“At first, we planned to keep Talk running while we worked on this. The third-party audio provider we use for Talk is, unfortunately, ending its service. In other words, a lot more resources were needed to keep Talk running during this change, Reddit said in a post.

Reddit Talk will be available until March 21, and users can download talks until June 1, but only if they were hosted after September 22. This will probably keep storage costs from being too high.

With this change, the company is also getting rid of the “Happening Now” page, which let people see what was being said in real time.

In April 2021, the social network put out Reddit Talk for the first time. Last year, it put the product on the web and added features like a better discovery tool and a soundboard.

Reddit is not the only platform that needs to change the way it handles live audio. Last year, Spotify shut down a fund for creators to have conversations in real time and stopped making a number of shows. Amazon cut jobs in October at Amp, an app it had made to help live radio. Even the most popular live audio app, Clubhouse, is becoming less popular. According to a Business Insider report from November, the app only has 200,000 monthly active users.