Twitter Spaces, Twitter’s answer to the Clubhouse phenomenon, is here. Perhaps ‘answer’ falls short: the microblogging network aspires to repeat the achievement of Instagram when it copied the ‘stories’ format and left its creator, Snapchat out of the picture.
What twitter Spaces offers is, in a nutshell, a tool to create, in a very simple way, public chat rooms (without limit of listeners) based on audio. And all this without leaving the Twitter app itself.
First glance of twitter spaces
For now, only a minority of users have received the notification that they are already capable of hosting these kinds of conversations, but in the next two weeks this functionality will be generalized until it reaches all tweeters (as long as their accounts are not are protected).
And, in any case, all of us can participate now as listeners: you can try it out by joining the spaces that you will see at the top of your Twitter timeline.
Of course, you will need to be using the most recent versions of the Twitter apps for Android and iOS; Well, when trying to join a space (via link) in the web version we have received the following message:
The message in the image is misleading, because Android users can access the spaces … what they cannot, for now, is to act as their hosts. Small limitations that we will see disappear once Spaces leaves its current beta phase.
Good news: once you are participating in a space, you can continue making normal use of your smartphone, not being necessary for Twitter to remain maximized on the screen.
How to create a space (only for iOS)?
- Press and hold the ‘Write’ button, then press the ‘Spaces’ icon.
- Select who will get permission to speak in the conversation. The options are: “Everyone“, “People you follow” or “Only the people you invite to speak” (in the latter case, you will have to select them one by one and they will receive the invitation link in a direct message).
- Press “Start your space” to begin, then grant the Twitter app access to the device’s microphone if you haven’t already.
Remember that you also have the option to add a descriptive title to your space, so that users know what you are talking about.
What new features can we expect in the coming weeks?
Apart from what we have commented above about the fact that soon all users will be able to be both listeners and hosts, there are a series of functionalities that Twitter is already working on, such as the possibility that a space has more than one host.
Those responsible for Twitter claim to be developing tools for those hosts who wish to record their spaces … and, in parallel, and for security reasons, they promise that they will enable measures that prevent conversations from being recorded without the consent of the attendees.
More: the hosts will be allowed to schedule the broadcast of their spaces, so that users interested in listening to them do not have to be aware of the moment when they hang up the link to access them once they have been created.
