Twitter launches Areas reside audio rooms for all customers with greater than 600 followers

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, speaks to students during a town hall at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi, India on November 12, 2018.

Anushree Fadnavis | Reuters

Twitter launched Spaces on Monday, a feature that allows users to join virtual rooms where they can have real-time audio conversations with others.

The company started testing Spaces with a limited number of users in November 2020. But on Monday, the feature will roll out globally to iOS and Android Twitter users with 600 or more followers.

Spaces is one of the first providers in a rapidly growing market for live calls with audio only. This technology caught the attention of Clubhouse, a start-up that was rapidly gaining popularity with venture capitalists, last year. Facebook also announced its plans last month to create this type of feature for its own services, and Spotify recently bought Betty Labs, a live audio app that focuses on sports.

Spaces will play a key role in Twitter’s ambitious goal of increasing its daily active user base to 315 million by the end of 2023.

How Spaces Work: Twitter users see purple bubbles at the top of their timeline when there are live conversations. Users can tap these purple bubbles to join a space. Once inside, users can tweet the space hosts or notify them directly or ask for a conversation.

As a space host, users have the ability to moderate their rooms by inviting others, choosing who can speak, and clearing up troublemakers.

Twitter also announced on Monday that it was working on an upcoming feature called Ticket Spaces. This feature allows users to create areas that others will need to purchase a ticket for in order to become a member. This should allow users to monetize Spaces and encourage them to have more live audio conversations on Twitter.

Hosts will generate most of the revenue from ticket sales, while Twitter will keep a small amount, the company said. Ticket Spaces will be introduced to a certain number of users in the coming months.