Twitter has joined the likes of Instagram and Facebook to enable audio recordings via DMs. This comes almost a year (June 2020) after rolling out an audio tweet feature for iOS users – though still unavailable to many.
The audio DM feature is being tested out with a 140 second limit and is available to both Android and iOS users.
Twitter’s voice DM is similar to its voice tweets; simple interface of a play and pause button. Also, while the audio plays, the sender’s avatar moves rhythmically. The spotted difference between the audio messaging and audio tweet feature is that audio messaging has an in-line recording experience that makes it feel like a natural conversation flow. There’s also a “report message” option.
In June 2020, Twitter was ridiculed for failing to factor in accessibility after launching its audio tweets for iOS. However, in a recent interview, with Protocol, Dantley Davis, Twitter’s design chief said that the company now has a full-time accessibility team within product development, and that includes engineering and design. “We also changed our product development process, so that accessibility is always considered during even the conceptualization of features.” He added.
While Twitter holds off the edit button users have been asking for, its new audio DM feature does excite but the caveat of these messages being unerasable like traditional DMs is worth resounding.
