Twitter has finally rolled out its live audio chat rooms, Spaces for Android users. This comes more than two months after the company began testing the feature with a small group of iOS users in late December 2020.
The feature will let users gather in rooms and engage in live audio conversations with other participants.
Spaces for android has been released at a time when Twitter’s rival audio-chat iPhone app, Clubhouse has disclosed that it is working on an android version. Perhaps this is Twitter’s proactive strategy of claiming a huge chunk of the Android market before Clubhouse enters the fray.
For context, Twitter’s voice tweet feature has yet to be enabled for android over eight (8) months after it was launched on iOS in June 2020.
Users cannot create their own spaces for now, but can jump into spaces created by a select few.
How to Join the Conversation
Here’s the thing, you can only join Twitter Spaces via the mobile app. But that’s not all, you have to be following someone who has created or joined Spaces to hop in.
To join, simply tap on any of the purple coloured spaces placed to the right of the Fleets icon above your Twitter home feed. The names of the hosts are displayed just below each space icon.
Click “Join this space” to join the live audio chat. You would be admitted as a listener by default. You may also join directly as a speaker through an invite link.
Unlike Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces doesn’t offer an explore option with a variety of topics which users can select from to join chat rooms.
What You Can Do in Spaces
After you tune in to a Twitter space, you’ll hear the host or speakers talking in real time on a chosen topic. By tapping on the ellipsis icon (…), you can turn on/off captions for you and/or the speakers.
When turned off, you will not see any written transcriptions for whatever is said by speakers in the space. You can also share feedback, drop an emoji or report the space.
To share your thoughts as a speaker in the space, tap on the request icon with the microphone icon. Once the host admits you as a speaker, the icon first brings up a green checkmark then later shows a microphone button for you to unmute and speak.
Apart from this, you can invite up to ten (10) people to the space via DM or by copying and sending the invite link.
A maximum of 10 speakers can speak at once in a space.
To exit a space, simply click on the red Leave button at the top right hand corner.
While Spaces lets you immerse yourself in the thrill of spontaneous voice chats, the captions for users who want to follow the chat via text are plagued with errors.
Captions that Cannot be Understood
If you choose to view voice-to-text transcriptions in a Twitter space, then you might as well reconsider. Although our Nigerian diction may not exactly fit the algorithm used, the translations do not tally with audio wordings in a way that makes any sense. See the caption below as an example.
However, Twitter may not be too bothered about perfecting its captions on Spaces as the biggest incentive for users is unarguably the live audio function.
Have you tried Spaces out yet? Then share your thoughts with us in the comments section!
Technext Newsletter
Get the best of Africa’s daily tech to your inbox – first thing every morning.
Join the community now!
