Twitter is opening up Spaces, its Clubhouse competitor, which lets you start or listen to live conversations. Beginning today, you’ll be able to host a Space as long as you have 600 or more followers.
“Based on what we’ve learned so far, these accounts are likely to have a good experience hosting live conversations because of their existing audience,” the company said in a blog post. “Before bringing the ability to create a Space to everyone, we’re focused on learning more, making it easier to discover Spaces, and helping people enjoy them with a great audience.”
Spaces are audio chatrooms. If someone you follow on Twitter starts or speaks in one, you’ll be able to tap in and listen live. If a moderator wants, they can let you speak as well.
Here’s what it will look like when someone you follow starts or speaks in a Space on Twitter.
Twitter plans to allow some users to experiment with ticketed spaces “in the coming months.” Hosts will be able to decide how much to charge for access to their rooms, as well as how many tickets will be available. The company said hosts will “earn the majority” of revenue from tickets, but didn’t provide details. The move will be one of Twitter’s first but not last forays into monetization features for creators on its platform. The company is also working on super follows, a feature that will allow users to charge for access to exclusive content on the platform, and in-app tipping.
Twitter is beginning these efforts with Spaces shows just how important “social audio” has become as companies increasingly try to compete with Clubhouse, which popularized the “social audio” format over the last year. Clubhouse is still invitation-only, and recently introduced its own monetization feature. Facebook also recently previewed a number of audio-only features, and now allows Instagram users to broadcast audio-only live streams. Reddit and LinkedIn have also said they are working on new audio features.
Besides ticketing, Twitter is also adding scheduling and co-hosting features to Spaces. Both features are similar to capabilities of Clubhouse, where multiple people can manage who has speaking privileges in a given room. The company will also introduce new accessibility features, including the ability to pause and edit live captions in Spaces.
