Twitter is all set to kill the Clubhouse, the hottest new entrant in the social media space!
On Monday, the popular microblogging platform announced that its own audio-only platform, Spaces, will finally be made available to more numbers of users globally.
Twitter first started testing its beta Clubhouse-like offering in late 2020 with a small group of users. But now it has decided to allow all accounts which have a minimum of 600 followers to host audio chat rooms or ‘Spaces’ as the company calls it.
With Spaces, Twitter users will be able to set up live audio rooms just like Clubhouse and broadcast them to their followers or listeners.
The company said that it has decided to limit the hosting privileges to accounts that have 600 more followers after careful observation of the beta testing period and getting effective feedback from users who used Spaces in the first phase.
Twitter also announced that it would enable the functionality wherein hosts or creators of Spaces be able to collect money on ticket sales they generate from their audio events. These additional new features on the product’s roadmap will be rolled out shortly.
In a statement about the same, a company spokesperson said that based on what Twitter has learnt so far, Spaces’ users are very likely to have a good experience of hosting live conversations because of their existing audience.
Furthermore, the Twitter spokesperson also mentioned that before the Clubhouse-like offering is rolled out to more users, their priority is to learn more whilst making it easier for people to discover Spaces and enjoy it.
Twitter could easily get a leg up in the race to dominate the audio space via its upcoming features that aim to enable host mint money off ticket sales, something which Clubhouse is not offering as of now.
The company said that it would let users set ticket prices and make available the number of tickets they desire in the near future. And by doing this, Twitter will take a slice of the proceeds.
According to Twitter, some users will be able to access this capability within the coming months itself. And the icing on the cake, the company will also introduce improved live captioning and the ability to co-host a Spaces’ audio session.
Thus, all in all, it is well understood that this launch aims to kneecap Clubhouse, whose downloads have been observed to be slowing down recently. The exclusive audio-only iOS app was downloaded 900,000 times in April, down from February’s peak of a whopping 9.6 million.
Note that besides Twitter, other social media giants such as Facebook and Discord have also launched similar audio platforms, while LinkedIn has been reported to be working on one.
So the question that arrives here is – Can Clubhouse innovate faster to escape having its functionality being turned into a mere feature by the other social media platforms? Only the future can tell.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments down below. We will keep you updated on all future developments. Until then, stay tuned.
