Twitter’s new Spaces feature is coming to Android users soon, the company announced today. The Spaces feature allows voice-based communication on Twitter, emulating Clubhouse, a breakout voice-based social network that’s been going viral over the past few months. “Android folks, our beta is growing! starting today you will be able to 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 eyes out for live Spaces above your home tl (timeline),” the company said via a tweet.
Spaces was first announced in December 2020 and has been available for iOS users so far. Like iOS, Android users too will have access to a controlled beta of the platform. This means that not every user will be able to start a conversation on Spaces, though they will see alerts at the top of their feed when someone on their timeline starts one.
Twitter says it’s focusing closely on the moderation aspect and gathering feedback from beta users before it rolls the platform out to everyone. Unlike Fleets and other features, which rolled out to larger user bases during their beta periods, Spaces’ rollout seems much more controlled. Spaces was first offered to women and people from marginalized communities, because they are more likely to be harassed online, the rationale being that this will help the company learn what it needs to do from the abuse and moderation points of view.
Bringing Spaces to Android could give Twitter an advantage on Clubhouse, which began in this space before the micro-blogging giant. The world’s largest mobile operating system could bring Spaces to many more users and overcome Clubhouse’s head start in the space. Of course, Twitter already has a large global user base already, which it can always leverage to increase visibility of Spaces. Clubhouse currently has over 10 million users, according to some report, and is available only on iOS.
