While the hype around audio social has died down a fair bit, Twitter is determined to continue pushing Spaces as a key connection tool in the hopes of making it a bigger part of the Twitter experience. The latest on this front is a new ad campaign for Spaces, which might not really sell the option as much as Twitter would hope.
Another One
If you’ve watched the trailer above, you can see how Twitter is trying to showcase the value of Spaces and audio discussions in the app. Certainly, the Spaces topics that it highlights here are fairly dominant – tap over to the Spaces right now and you’ll find a number of Spaces on NFTs, ‘shower thoughts’, and the like.
The problem is that this is also part of the reason why Spaces isn’t catching on – most of the discussions within Spaces are fairly niche, and Twitter’s algorithm isn’t the best when it comes to highlighting the most valuable and interesting discussion for each individual user. Of course, it’s not something that’s easy to do. With discussions happening live, they essentially can’t be categorized and moderated ahead of time, although Twitter did add Topic Tags to help with this.
The bigger challenge could be that Twitter doesn’t want to recommend Spaces that could be problematic. If you were to visit the Spaces tab and find a top Space that Twitter highlighted, and that Space ended up, say, being a disguised chat about QAnon, the backlash could be significant. This is but one of the many challenges associated with live-stream content, which, again, was underlined earlier this week when a Twitch user streamed himself on a shooting spree in Buffalo.
Facebook found the same with its live map feature, which it eventually shut down. You see, when promoting live-stream content, you also run the risk of promoting harmful material as well, despite it not being your intent. It’s simply one of the unavoidable details associated with the live experience. Though in Twitter’s case, we believe that the algorithm simply isn’t that good in showing you the most relevant stuff at any given time.
Despite its broad social graph and insights into user interests. Twitter’s never been known for personalization, something that TikTok has every other platform beat with its revolutionary ‘For You’ algorithm that works so well at sucking people into nigh-limitless content rabbit holes. TikTok’s design to essentially drive a compulsive viewing experience is the reason why its currently so popular – something that Twitter has never been great at. Ever. Twitter wasn’t even able to do half of what TikTok did with Vine. Likewise, its live-stream push with Periscope also failed because it failed to boost engagement.
The Wrap
As of now, Spaces seems to suffer much from the same affliction. Unless Twitter can make its Spaces tab more compelling by making it algorithmically more optimized, it won’t be a key connection tool anytime soon. While there are a couple of users who see value in the option, it needs wider adoption if its to become a key part of the overall Twitter experience.
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