Twitter begins testing voice message feature
Feature to be rolled out in phases today; Brazil, Japan are the other test countries
If you intend to send a direct message (DM) on Twitter, the microblogging platform is offering an option of doing so through audio. Starting Wednesday, Twitter will begin testing the voice message feature for DMS in India. The feature, which is being tested in India, Brazil and Japan, will be rolled out in phases for users.
If you intend to send a direct message (DM) on Twitter, the microblogging platform is offering an option of doing so through audio. Starting Wednesday, Twitter will begin testing the voice message feature for DMS in India.
The feature, which is being tested in India, Brazil and Japan, will be rolled out in phases for users.
“India is a priority market for Twitter and that is why we’re constantly testing new features and learning from people’s experience on the service here,” said Manish Maheshwari, managing director, Twitter India. “We’re excited to bring the voice messages in DMS experiment to the country and give people a new way to express themselves and help them connect through the nuances, emotion and empathy built by hearing someone’s voice,” he added.
Each voice message can be up to 140 seconds long, similar to the voice tweets that the microblogging service introduced in June last year.
To send a voice message as a DM, the user will have to tap the new voice recording icon once to begin recording. Tap the stop icon when done. Users will have the option of listening to their recording before sending or deleting it.
On IOS (Apple devices), users can also quick-send by holding down the voice recording icon and swiping up to send immediately after they’re done talking.
For Twitter, India is one of its key markets, and the company rolls out features such as these in the country first.
“We are dedicated to giving people more options to express themselves in conversations on Twitter — both publicly and privately,” said Alex Ackerman-greenberg, product manager for direct messages at Twitter. “We hope letting people record and send voice messages as DMS will enhance their conversational experience by adding convenience and expression,” he added.
In June last year, Twitter tested its Fleets feature in India and two other markets initially. Fleets works on the lines of “stories” on Instagram or Facebook, allowing users to post messages that would disappear after 24 hours.
The same month, it introduced voice tweets, allowing users to tweet 140-second-long audio on Twitter. Content longer than 140 seconds gets recorded as a separate recording, which can be appended to a single tweet.