After rolling out a test of voice tweets earlier this year, Twitter today launched another new feature that's focused on voice.
Twitter Spaces is a new feature that lets you create live audio rooms where you can chat with other people using your voice. In its announcement, Twitter compared Spaces to a dinner party, saying, "At a bomb dinner party, you don't need to know everyone to have a great time, but everyone feels comfortable at the table. We wanted Spaces to have that magic feeling, too."
Spaces is in a private beta right now. Twitter says it will test Spaces with a "very small feedback group" that will largely consist of people from underrepresented backgrounds (via TechCrunch). The beta will only be available on iOS to start and will be rolling out over the coming weeks.
the human voice can bring a layer of connectivity to twitter through emotion, nuance and empathy often lost in text. we see this with voice tweets & voice dms. sometimes 280 isn't enough, and voice gives people another way to join the conversation.
— Spaces (@TwitterSpaces) December 17, 2020
People who get into the beta can create a Space either by pressing and holding the compose button in the lower right corner of the screen or by swiping right and using the Fleets creation screen. Hosts can invite other Twitter users into a Space through a direct message or by tweeting or sharing a link.
Once inside a Space, the host can control who's speaking and will eventually gain more tools to control the conversation. Twitter says that it's also testing emoji reactions, an early version of live transcriptions, reporting and blocking, and sharing tweets inside Spaces.
Twitter has largely focused on text conversations to date, but sometimes those can be hard to follow if you've got multiple people participating at the same time. Voice is easier for a group to have an ongoing conversation, and giving control a host control over who can come into a Space and who in that Space can talk could help with moderation.
While it's in a very small beta test right now, Twitter Spaces could eventually become available more widely.
