Facebook's Fidji Simo expounds on the company's upcoming audio offerings at Collision Conference 2021

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As you might have heard, Facebook is working on several audio-only products rolling out in the future. So, it makes sense that Fidji Simo, the head of the Facebook app, will talk about these offerings at this year's Collision Conference. 

According to Simo, Facebook's goal with its new products and its approach with developing products is that they "aim to understand what people are trying to do and make it easy for them."

These audio offerings are meant to provide Facebook's users an easier way to connect with others while getting rid of issues like video fatigue. And the social network wanted to offer its take because it observes that the audio experiences available now "are still very fragmented," as Simo said.

The move is also meant to give creators on its platform a new way to gain an audience and a new way to monetize, which Simo said Facebook wants to support.

When asked about safety and security concerns that these audio features, she said that reducing the risks of offensive and defamatory content being broadcast is a priority for Facebook.

"We've made a lot of investment in speech-to-text technology, so we can basically take audio and translate it into text and run our AI models on your text. It will give us a lot of help in detecting [offensive] content in real-time."

Simo also addressed critiques that Facebook simply copies ideas of other social networks. She said these new audio formats have been in the works for many years.

"I've been at Facebook for 10 years," she said. "So I know how hard it is to create something for short-format [audio]... we think we can bring something to the table of online audio content."

Check out more of our stories from Collision Conference 2021 HERE.