Twitter’s push for a broader focus on audio social has it expanding its ‘Spaces’ to enable all users to be able to host their own sessions. Here’s the official Tweet. Spaces hosting will now be open to all iOS and Android users.
Prior to this update, only those with more than 600 followers could host their own broadcasts. Users with less than 600 followers could still tune in to active Spaces, but that’s as far as they could go which, to some extent, did limit the platform’s viability as a channel for brand-growth.
Enabling Spaces hosting for all users opens up new doors, but also welcomes new drawbacks. For one thing, while it does provide everyone with additional communication formats, potentially improving audience engagement, reach, and relevance, it also somewhat presents challenges with regards to maintaining the logistical and technical quality of having to manage multiple conversations at once.
Twitter is continually at work with this and has in fact released a quick-fix of sorts just this week in the form of editable tagged topics within Scheduled Spaces. The addition of topic tags themselves to Spaces was added last month. Twitter is also still in the process of rolling out the Spaces Tab. In sync with all of the aforementioned updates, the tab is designed to better highlight in-progress chats in accordance with the time of day and any registered interest/s.
Ideally, with this kind of approach in streamlining their Spaces format, Twitter is able to get the most value out of it by being able to show every user the best and most relevant chats. However, similar to what Clubhouse has and still is experiencing, enabling more users to broadcast equates to there eventually being more broadcasters online, thus increasing the likelihood of lower-quality broadcasts as well as more instances of spamming and similar nuances. Contingency to such scenarios demands the exertion of extra effort on Twitter’s side as it will need to refine its system filters in order to still supply its users with only the most relevant Spaces.
In this regard, perhaps Facebook demonstrated what was the better approach by only introducing it’s version of ‘Spaces’ to celebrities, influencers, and select groups. This way better enables users to only see audio rooms that have a certain degree of relevance to them.
The Wrap
Technically, Twitter and Clubhouse are considered the ‘Kings of Audio Social’ right now, but until they figure out how to better filter and provide linkages to more relevant content, user-adoption of the format would be subpar at best. That, and the fact that more people are gravitating towards short-form video, leaves much to be desired when it comes to raw audio-based content. This is evident in the example of ‘Live Stream Guests’, which Twitter retired just earlier in October.
On the topic of relevance, since audio-only content is reliant on only one sensory element, the reception of quality content is indeed stringent across all audience types. This would partially explain why people who head to the Spaces tab only to find what to them is “junk” are likely not to return. Video is not much different, but at least it has other elements to fall back on should the message fail at face-value. The challenge now for platforms pushing improved audio-social formats is how they can increase broadcasting scope and capability while simultaneously ensuring content quality and relevance. Twitter is a step closer, yes, but there is still much to be done.
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