Twitter Starts Allowing Users To Tweet With Their Voice, Initially For iOS Users

Twitter

Twitter has given its users a way to express their voice to the world. This time, it literally allows users to really speak on the platform.

Twitter is a text-focused social network, but that doesn't mean users couldn't use photos and videos as their methods of communications. Twitter has indeed grown to be more complex, but in a humble manner.

And with an update, the social media has added a voice tweet feature so users can send personalized audio messages to their followers.

Initially made available on its iPhone and iPad apps, iOS users can tap on the Compose Tweet floating action button, to then select the soundwave-like button on the toolbar that appears above the keyboard.

In a blog post, Twitter said that:

"Over the years, photos, videos, gifs, and extra characters have allowed you to add your own flair and personality to your conversations."

"But sometimes 280 characters aren’t enough and some conversational nuances are lost in translation. So starting today, we’re testing a new feature that will add a more human touch to the way we use Twitter – your very own voice."

When they're ready to record a voice message for a tweet, users can simply tap on the Microphone button and start speaking.

Twitter will then show a soundbar on the screen, indicating that the recording has started.

Users can at any time, select the Pause button to take a break from the recording, to then hit the Record button again to continue.

Twitter has not put a time limit for the recording, or at least yet. But if the recording is long, it will break the recording to around two-minute-long clips.

"Each voice Tweet captures up to 140 seconds of audio. Have more to say? Keep talking. Once you reach the time limit for a Tweet, a new voice Tweet starts automatically to create a thread. Once you’re done, tap the Done button to end your recording and go back to the composer screen to Tweet," as explained by Twitter.

When users are done recording, they can finish by taping the Done button.

After that, users will be taken to the next step where they can take a last look and listen at their recording.

And when they're ready to post, they can select the Tweet button.

Twitter, tweet using voice on iOS

When shared, the users and other Twitter users can play the recorded message by tapping on the Play button.

The audio recording will play in a mini-player docked at the bottom of the screen. Listeners can pause and exit the voice tweet directly from this playback bar.

Additionally, the player can follow users through Twitter. So for example if the voice tweet is long, users can leave the original tweet and browse Twitter like they normally would, and the recording will keep playing while they scroll through their feed.

For almost all of its life, Twitter has been one of the underdog of social media, if compared to Facebook and its properties, for example. Despite that, it manages to be one of the popular places where controversies happen, as political figures, business influencers and conspiracies gather to voice their thoughts.

And also for almost that long, Twitter has been shy in introducing radical features, and has seemed to go against delivering new groundbreaking products.

Twitter is better known to improve what it is best known for. Instead of aiming to be a feature-packed and bloated social media, it expanded the limits on tweets from 140 to 280 characters, introduced support for emoji searches, introduced the continue thread, and more.

And for this voice feature, Twitter is limiting them to just 140 seconds each, meaning that it is not willing to be the next podcast platform, even if it can.

In other words, Twitter retains its philosophy, and hopes that the feature can enable a new type of communication that fits into the existing conversation flows.

"There’s a lot that can be left unsaid or uninterpreted using text, so we hope voice Tweeting will create a more human experience for listeners and storytellers alike," closed Twitter.

Published: 
20/06/2020