Twitter is testing out its voice and audio capabilities as they’re now letting users in select markets send voice direct messages to your contacts. This follows the feature that let you send Voice Tweets that they have also been testing since last year. This time around, voice DMs are being tested out in Brazil, India, and Japan, some of their biggest markets. This may also be part of Twitter’s eventual plan to widely roll out their Clubhouse clone/competitor Spaces.
Each voice Direct Message can last up to 140 seconds, similar to Voice Tweets. Sending one is pretty straightforward. Just open an existing conversation you have or start a new one the usual way. You can then tap on the voice recording icon to start your message and then tap it again to end it. You also have the option to listen to the message first before sending to the recipient to make sure. iOS users can also press and hold to start recording then swipe up and release to send. Hopefully, this feature comes to Android devices as well.
If you received a voice DM, you can listen to it on your mobile device and also on the web browser. However, creating and sending one is limited only to smartphones and tablets for now. That will probably change eventually once the rollout becomes wider as there are also a lot of people using Twitter on their computers. A feature like this should come in handy although it seems to be built for mobile first.
Twitter seems to be heavily investing in the voice and audio space as they find more ways for people to engage on the platform. Twitter Spaces is currently still in limited beta but it wants to challenge new platform Clubhouse in terms of audio chatting and messaging. The latter has been making waves with their invite-only rollout for the audio chat market, prompting companies like Twitter and Facebook to create their own versions.
As for voice DMs, it’s currently only available in Brazil, India, and Japan. India in particular is a “priority market” for Twitter as per Manish Maheshwari, the Managing Director for Twitter India. This feature will be rolling out in phases as per their Twitter account.
🎤test,🎤test: Starting today, you'll be able to record and send voice messages in DMs 😉 Here’s how👇
PS. The experiment will be rolled out in phases. pic.twitter.com/aqQM6h9sof
— Twitter India (@TwitterIndia) February 17, 2021
