Twitter announced today it’s opening up its live audio chat rooms, known as Twitter Spaces, to users on Android. Previously, the experience was only open to select users on iOS following the product’s private beta launch in late December 2020. The company says that Android users can only join and talk in Spaces for now but won’t yet be able to start their own. That added functionality is expected to ship “soon,” Twitter says, without offering an exact timeframe. Android folks, our beta is growing! Starting today, you can join and talk in any Space.
SOON you’ll be able to create your own, but we’re still working out some things. Keep your 👀 out for live Spaces above your home. The company has been working quickly to iterate on Twitter Spaces in the months since its beta debut and has been relatively transparent about its roadmap. Last month, the Twitter Spaces team hosted a Space where users were invited to offer feedback, ask questions, and learn about what Twitter had in the works for the product in the near term and further down the road. During this live chat, Twitter confirmed that Spaces would arrive on Android in March.
It also promised a fix to how it displays listeners, which has since rolled out. Other Spaces features are being shared publicly as they’re designed and prototyped, including titles and descriptions, scheduling options, support for co-hosts and moderators, guest lists, and more. Twitter has also updated the preview card in the timeline and relabeled its “captions” feature to be more accurate from an accessibility standpoint. The time frame of some of its new developments — like Android and scheduling options — was promised in weeks, not months. This fast pace has led Twitter to beat its rival Clubhouse — the app currently leading the “social audio” market — to offer support for Android. Today, Clubhouse remains iOS-only in addition to being invite-only.
It also indicates the resources Twitter is putting into this new product, which was first announced publicly in November. Twitter believes social audio is a market it needs to win. The company also sees the broader potential for Spaces as being a vital part of a larger creator platform now in the works. Twitter discussed tying together its new products like Spaces Newsletters and a “Super Follow” paid subscription during its Investor Day last week last week. It’s now also testing a Twitter “Shopping Card” that would allow users to tweet posts that link directly to product pages via a “Shop” button — a feature that would also seem to fall under this new creator focus.
