Twitter Spaces, the social network’s own version of Clubhouse has been fast-tracking its adoption to Twitter’s 192 million monetizable daily active users. [The giant social network plans to have 315 million monetizable daily active users by 2023.]
Twitter Spaces is Twitter’s audio chat room feature first launched on iOS to rival Clubhouse.
Early this week, Twitter Spaces became available on Android. Clubhouse is yet to launch an Android app, although they announced they’re working on one.
The Team working on Spaces hosted a chat room to talk about the current features and new ones they’re working on.
PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN TESTING SPACES HAVE SEEN A SURGE IN FOLLOWER GROWTH ESPECIALLY IF THEY’RE HOSTS OR SPEAKERS.
Here are the new features that will soon be coming to Twitter Spaces.
Scheduling Spaces
Twitter will now let users schedule Spaces for their followers and other guests to join in on their chat rooms.
Users will tweet out their upcoming space and then have guests sign up for reminders straight from their timeline.
The Twitter Spaces team has been really careful not to ruin the casual and intimate vibe of spaces so that guests that show up don’t feel like it’s a conference or meetings.
Twitter Spaces is also including Reminders to chat sessions so you don’t miss out.
This update will roll out in the next few weeks.
Ability to natively record conversations
Twitter’s head of consumer product, Kayvon Beykpour said the social media giant is working on letting users natively record their Twitter Spaces.
Conversations on Twitter Spaces can’t be recorded on the app and a lot of users want to be able to listen to chat rooms after the session has ended. For now, you get this notification.
Twitter Spaces is coming to the Web
Twitter Spaces is testing letting users access this Spaces on the web.
This is going to be so huge for Twitter Spaces as it will be available on the web, on Android and on iOS.
Reminders
Twitter is working to bring reminders on Spaces that will alert you when a scheduled session is about to begin. You will be able to set a reminder on the app.
This feature is set to launch later this month.
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— Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) April 16, 2021
Multiple Hosts
Twitter Spaces will soon add support for co-hosts and moderators. You’ll receive a toast notification at the top of the page says, “This person made you a co-host of this space”
The co-host will be able to speak, remove other speakers, and manage the guest list.
In terms of moderation, the co-host and the host will have to agree on the rules for the specific chat room.
Manage Guest List/Requests
Beta-testers of Twitter Spaces are reporting that hosts can now manage their guests lists. We’ll see this feature have a public rollout later in the coming weeks.
Twitter is also working on better ways to manage requests during chats.
New Controls for Hosts
Hosts will have new controls for their chat rooms including the ability to take down pinned tweets(this feature is yet to be announced), collapse or delete tweets.
Introduction of New Media Types
Twitter is exploring the idea of adding new media types to Spaces instead of just tweets. It’s going to be interesting to see how this turns especially for live breaking news.
Something else Twitter is working on is embeddable Spaces that can be integrated on sites.
Improved Accessibility
Twitter Spaces team is working with its Accessibility team to ensure features introduced are accessible by everyone like the introduction of an improved live caption tool.
Transparency on Audio Monitoring
Twitter says that they only store audio for 30 days to review and investigate flagged or reported spaces. The audio is deleted after 30 days. It can only be extended if an appeal is made.
Improved Discoverability
Twitter is now working on giving Spaces a dedicated tab on the mobile app according to what reverse engineer Jane Manchung Wong has so far found out.
It will join the Messages, Search, Notifications and Home tabs in the navigation bar at the bottom of the app.
Twitter is working on a dedicated page/tab for @TwitterSpaces pic.twitter.com/ggXgYU6RAf
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) March 17, 2021
Twitter is working on making Spaces more discoverable with native features such as including them on the Fleets section on top of your timeline. They’re working to integrate this feature with its Topics feature so that people who follow a certain topic can be notified when a Space related to their interest goes live for them to participate.
This is so Twitter subsections like BTS Twitter, FinTech Twitter, Science Twitter, can participate without missing out – something Clubhouse has perfected in interest-specific rooms.
Hosts on Android
Twitter is working on bringing the ability of Android users to host Spaces. At the moment, Android users can only join in ongoing Spaces.
Improved Audio Quality
Twitter is working to improve audio quality on Spaces. They’ll have to have a really solid understanding of people’s network connections and deliver them the best audio quality that they can essentially afford with the connections they have.
As Twitter make the infrastructure more complex, there is a bunch of more optionality they’ll have to figure this out.
When to expect these and more new features:
With the future of social media being audio, Twitter is putting a lot of resources to fast pace Spaces before its rivals catch up so these new features and more might ship in weeks instead of months.
Twitter has been launching new features since late last year and its making the platform more enticing after years of laying dormant in terms of product development.
