Twitter is reportedly working on a voice chat feature called Audio Spaces, which seems to be in private beta testing. Audio Spaces will potentially be voice chatrooms centered around certain tweets. They could allow users to have live conversations with one another, whether one-on-one or as part of a larger group.
Twitter has been busy of late. In addition to tackling election misinformation, it launched its disappearing tweets, or 'Fleets', feature last month in an attempt to compete with Snapchat and the Stories feature on Instagram and Facebook. It also recently announced that public verification would return early next year. TechCrunch first reported on Audio Spaces in November, meanwhile, sharing screenshots showing what the new feature could look like.
According to a new report from TechCrunch, a reverse engineer named Jane Manchun Wong has discovered further information about Audio Spaces. Wong enabled private beta testing within the Twitter app, discovering various potential features. For example, users may be able to react with the 100 emoji and the waving emoji. It seems that transcriptions of conversations held in Audio Spaces will be available too. Users may also be able to control who enters an Audio Space, including just letting in participants they’ve personally invited, and creators may be able to control who speaks and when. If users run into any issues, according to Wong, spaces can be reported. There’s even a special Twitter account, @TwitterSpaces, via which users can send feedback in DMs.
Will People Actually Use Audio Spaces?
The question with any new social media feature is whether or not people will actually use it. There are dedicated apps for voice chat, including Discord and Zoom, both of which include video call functionality that Audio Spaces apparently won’t have. Still, focussing Audio Spaces on tweets people want to talk about may help Twitter users to find others who are interested in discussing the same things.
The idea that Audio Spaces will have transcripts is also a nice touch. For one thing, even when the conversation is over, people may be able to go back and read over it again, with transcripts allowing people to revisit a conversation for whatever reason. In addition, transcripts offer a level of accessibility for people who are hard of hearing, or for those who have had difficulty understanding what someone else is saying. There's no word on when (or whether) the feature will roll out publicly, but watch these Spaces.
Source: TechCrunch