"We know people want more options for how they express themselves in conversations on Twitter — both publicly and privately"
What you need to know
- Twitter is testing a brand new feature.
- It will experiment with sending voice messages over DM.
- It recently rolled out audio tweets in June.
Twitter is to begin testing a new feature which will allow users to send direct voice messages to other users, after recently announcing new audio tweets.
From :
was first noted as being in testing by Matt Navarra a couple of weeks ago and had been rumored since August after it was found by developer Alessandro Paluzzi in Twitter's code.
As noted, voice messages will be 20-seconds long and have a simple play/pause button to control received messages. The Twitter product team says it has designed an "in-line recording experience" to make sending voice messages a more natural part of Twitter conversations. There's also a 'report message' feature for the inevitable abuse this feature will likely bring.
Twitter has previously rolled out audio tweets and has come under increasing scrutiny for overlooking accessibility on its platform. In a , Twitter's design chief Dantley Davis noted Twitter now has a full-time accessibility team, and that it has changed its product development process so that accessibility is "always considered during even the conceptualization of features."