Social media apps like Vine, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram are full of video and images, but they don’t offer much in the way of storytelling. Audible wants to change that with a new feature in its app called Clips, which encourages you to share excerpts from your favorite audiobooks on social media like you would share a Vine or a meme.
Clips basically allows you to select a short passage from an audiobook, after which you can download the excerpt or share it to social media, through emails, or in a text message.
With the new tool, you can choose 45 seconds of audio and make edits to it, if you so choose. The editing capability is something that should help people turn snippets of audiobooks into stories of their own.
“Listeners … love talking about books, authors, and narrators they are passionate about, and ‘Clips’ makes it easier for our customers to start meaningful conversations with their friends and family directly from their audiobook whenever inspiration strikes!” said Don Katz, Audible founder and CEO, in a statement.
When you share a splice of audio to a friend, they won’t need an account or even the app in order to listen — It’s just an audio file that can be accessed from anywhere. Of course, your friends will have the opportunity to sign up and buy the full audiobook.
Clips is available in both the iOS and Windows version of Audible’s app, and it will be rolled out to Android users soon. If you already have access to the feature, you simply need to hit the ‘+ Clip’ button in the bottom right corner, after which the app will grab the last 30 seconds of audio that you listened to. You can then edit and tweak that audio however you want, before sharing it.
The new feature is a small step into social media, but it’s clear that Audible is looking for ways to expand its business. Taking advantage of our instinct to share everything we find online is a great way of doing so.
