The craze for Clubhouse-style audio rooms doesn't appear to be going anywhere, with Instagram the latest major social media app to seemingly begin prepping a competing feature. 

Being able to broadcast your voice to followers and friends, without having to worry about live-streaming video alongside it, has captured the attention of the crowds, and new images suggest Instagram will be vying to be a destination. 

App researcher Alessandro Paluzzi has posted images of new additions to the Instagram app showing how users could select a microphone icon to begin a broadcast just like they might an Instagram Live. 

It wouldn't be the most complicated addition, you'd imagine, and these images suggest that Instagram is at a fairly advanced stage in their development, so Clubhouse might well have itself a new competitor sooner rather than later. 

In slightly less buzzy news, but equally encouraging for some users, Instagram is also working on end-to-end encryption for its chat functionality, according to the same source, Paluzzi. 

That would be a welcome improvement, especially given Instagram's obvious and increasing entanglement with the broader Facebook system, and some people's suspicion of that network's data usage.