Twitter’s previously invite-only audio chat feature Spaces is now public. Starting today (May 3), the company says it is making Spaces available to all accounts with 600 or more followers, and has announced a string of upcoming features including ticketing to help Spaces compete in the fast-growing audio chat space.
“Based on what we’ve learned so far, these accounts are likely to have a good experience hosting live conversations because of their existing audience,” the company said in a press release. “Before bringing the ability to create a Space to everyone, we’re focused on learning more, making it easier to discover Spaces and helping people enjoy them with a great audience.”
Much like on competitor Clubhouse, Spaces users can set up, host and invite others to audio-only conversations about pretty much anything. Spaces first rolled out in beta mode earlier this year to an invite-only group of celebrities and influencers, including K-pop group NCT, which broke Spaces records with more than 103,000 listeners to a single session in March; Nick Jonas, who held his Spaceman album release party on Spaces the same month; and Taylor Swift, who previewed a song from Fearless: Taylor’s Version on Spaces hours before the album’s April release.
Soon, Twitter says it will give users the ability to sell tickets for their Spaces. The ticketing tool, which allows hosts to set ticket prices as well as the number of tickets available, is rolling out to a limited group “in the coming months,” according to the company. Twitter says that hosts will earn “the majority of the revenue” from ticket sales, although Twitter will keep “a small amount.”
Over the next few weeks, Twitter says it will also let users schedule and set reminders for upcoming Spaces, as well as co-host Spaces.
With Spaces, Twitter enters a quickly-evolving market for audio chat. The market is currently dominated by Clubhouse, the invitation-only audio chat app which launched last March and has reached approximately 15.6 million installs globally, according to Sensor Tower. Clubhouse is rolling out monetization features for its creators, who can now collect tips from users and keep 100% of the money. But Clubhouse currently relies on venture capital to keep the wheels turning, and has yet to demonstrate a monetization model of its own.
Meanwhile, Twitter isn’t the only company working on a competitor. In March, Spotify bought the maker of popular sports talk app Locker Room, with plans to add music and cultural programming. Facebook is said to be working on a rival app as well.
