As Twitter’s live audio product Spaces continues to grow in popularity, it seems like the tech giant is already looking towards building a tab dedicated to podcasts on its mobile apps. A screenshot posted by reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong shows a microphone icon in the bottom menu bar of the app, which redirects to a page titled “Podcasts.”
However, it is unclear how the podcasts feature would function on Twitter or the next step for Spaces – an incorporation of sorts for audio-only chat rooms. It would make sense to reorganize Spaces into a separate tab since it is currently only stuffed at the top of feeds. Spaces was first launched in 2020 and Twitter dove even deeper into the audio medium after the acquisition of Breaker, a social podcast platform.
Recently, Spaces introduced a very important update, allowing anyone to create a chatroom and allowing all mobile users to record conversations. This feature provides Spaces with similar features to those in podcasts, but the recordings are only temporary and last for 30 days. Adding a podcast feature will put Twitter on a level playing field with other giants like Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Listeners would no longer need to join Spaces broadcasts live or listen to them within 30 days with the presumed update, they would just be able to choose and listen at their own convenience.
Twitter is just another name in a long list of social media platforms that support podcasts in order to generate more revenue. Last year, Facebook started allowing podcast creators to share their content. Reddit recently enabled the ability to record its audio-only Talks.
Whether or not the Twitter podcast becomes a reality remains to be seen, but it will be an important addition to Spaces if it does.
