TWITTER STARTS ROLLING, Out ‘Audio Tweets’ On iOS!

TWITTER STARTS ROLLING OUT ‘AUDIO TWEETS’, ITS LATEST FEATURE ON iOS

Social giant Twitter starts rolling out on its platform a new type of tweet it calls ‘audio tweets’ designed to allow users to share their thoughts differently from traditional tweets but in an audio form inside their feeds. However, the social giant’s latest feature is understood to be available to only some iOS users at the moment which the company says will be accessible by all iOS users “in the coming weeks”. No response at the moment for Android and web users.

Twitter reportedly moved quickly to share the full workflow in a tweet from the company’s official account based on how users can navigate. Meanwhile, for users with access to the latest feature, the process is understood to be straightforward, to go about it, users could practically write a new tweet as they usually do, while at the moment, there is a media option, options to attach photo or video, and with that, a new button where users can record a quick audio message. However, a blog post announcing the latest feature reads:

“Over the years, photos, videos, gifs, and extra characters have allowed you to add your own flair and personality to your conversations. But sometimes 280 characters aren’t enough and some conversational nuances are lost in translation. So starting today, we’re testing a new feature that will add a more human touch to the way we use Twitter – your very own voice”.

As Twitter starts rolling out its latest, the company had previously deployed a similar measure aimed at expanding tweet limits, which Twitter announced in 2017, that it was expanding the limit on tweets from 140 to 280 characters. This, in turn, limited audio clips to 140 seconds, however, the feature did allow for much longer thoughts to be shared on the service. While in the process of chatting and a user eventually chats beyond the limit, instead of being cut off, a new tweet will be threaded beneath the original, while allowing the flow of user thoughts to continue.

In another dimension, there is an issue of obvious concern that has left an open question to the company’s latest and that is how ‘audio tweets’ could potentially add to Twitter’s abuse problem. It’s also important we understand the essence of limit in tweets, and the company move shows it’s not racing to turn its platform to a podcast, but instead, hopes the latest feature will enable a new type of conversation that suits into the existing conversation flows.

With audio becoming a rolling trend in social networking, as it has been figured out over some years, podcasts have practically become a hotter space with tech companies such as Spotify investing heavily in startups coupled with content acquisition, recently, an audio-based social platform – clubhouse – have received a lot of funds from investors in Silicon Valley after it has attracted a lot of attention.

For Twitter to deal with harassment, it will be easier to auto-flag by using machine learning tools, which has been a serious challenge when it comes to flagging harassment among exclusive text tweets.

As twitter starts rolling out ‘audio tweets’, what’ll be its impact?