Twitter has begun a wider trial of Spaces, the Clubhouse-style feature that gives users audio chat rooms. The feature, which is powered by Periscope, was first announced in November and was initially released for a limited beta test in December. The wider test on Twitter Spaces comes amid the growing popularity of Clubhouse, the voice-based social network, which has put a list of famous faces among the tech industry. The invitation-only app, however, was recently banned in China in connection with censorship. It has also been criticized for its lack of content modeling.
A club is only available for those invited, and Twitter’s beta test on Spaces has just expanded to 3,000 more people in addition to the first round of about 1,000 testers. These beta testers will first access the feature to create private or public rooms. Any Twitter user who follows them will be able to listen into the Spaces rooms created by the beta testers.
Twitter Product Leader Kayvon Beykpour held a Spaces chat room Tuesday to announce a more extensive trial of the feature, such as tweet by Tom Warren of The Verge. He said the rollout is out in ramps in the coming weeks.
Some Twitter employees also started creating new Places. The feature, however, is still available with the majors. Gadgets 360 has reached out to Twitter for clarity on the test and will update this space as the company responds.
Twitter allows users to listen to Places created by beta testers
As first mentioned, Twitter Spaces is currently limited to iOS. This means you need to have Twitter for iOS to listen to or create a space. But in late January, the official Spaces account tweeted showing that it works on the feature for Android as well. The microblogging network announced in January that Breaker has built a podcast platform that helps build its Spaces features for audio chats.
Twitter has introduced Spaces at a time when Clubhouse is becoming popular for the audio-only chat rooms. A club has been popular in the U.S. among the tech industry for some time now, but is far from appealing to mainstream. Nevertheless, the app is now building in markets including India as top technical leaders including Vijay Shekhar Sharma at Paytm. Its main draw, however, still gets the chance to hear Silicon Valley investors like Marc Andreessen, and surprise pop-ins from Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
However, Clubhouse was recently banned in China because it briefly stopped the country’s censorship which appealed to a number of Chinese consumers.
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