Twitter Spaces is expanding. After a long test phase, which lasted months, the social network’s audio service is now available for all users with more than 600 followers. With Spaces, users can create “rooms” in which to speak by voice, with profiles that can speak and speak to an audience of listeners, who are allowed to intervene “by raising their hand”. More or less come Clubhouse, the emerging social network that aroused wide interest also in Italy at the beginning of this year. Unlike Clubhouse, which is only available as an iPhone app, even those with an Android smartphone can access Twitter Spaces.
From Twitter they explain that the decision to limit the function to accounts with 600 followers derives from the need to continue to test Spaces in a controlled manner, before being able to extend the service to anyone who wants to create a room for their audio chats. Conversations that take place via Spaces can be aimed at a small, intimate audience of friends and acquaintances, or they can turn into big real-time discussions with thousands of listeners.
To access Twitter Spaces or to create a room, you need to use the Twitter app for iOS or Android. When someone you follow takes part in an audio chat creates one, a purple bubble appears at the top of the timeline as long as the room is active. When you participate in a conversation with Twitter Spaces as a listener you can react to what you hear with emojis, consult the Tweets pinned at the top of the conversation, read the subtitles, write a Tweet, ask for the word or send a DM directly to the Twitter Spaces conversation.
At the same time as the announcement of the expansion of Spaces to accounts with more than 600 followers, Twitter also announced the changes it plans to implement in the coming months:
- Ticketed Spaces: as the name suggests, they are audio chats for which it will be possible to request the payment of a virtual ticket for access. Conductors will be able to set ticket prices to participate in conversations and decide how many to sell. In the coming months, the Ticketed Spaces feature will be tested by a small group of users. Twitter will keep a small commission on the ticket price.
- Programming and reminder: in the coming weeks it will be possible to schedule Twitter Spaces and set reminders for upcoming conversations already scheduled.
- Co-conduct: it will soon be possible to manage the management of a spaces together with other users, to facilitate the moderation of the interventions by the speakers or other participants
- Accessibility: Twitter is working on improving subtitles in real time so they can be paused, customized and made more precise.
- Access to the conversation: In addition to the bubbles at the top of the timeline, Twitter is testing the possibility of signaling the activation of a room using a purple frame around the profile photo of an active user in a Space