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Chronicles

The story behind the story

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Twitter says it will begin testing audio DMs soon, after introducing support for audio in tweets, starting in Brazil

Shout into my DMs  —  After rolling out audio tweets for iOS in June, Twitter is now experimenting with the idea of letting people record and send voice messages through direct messages.

The Verge Chris Welch

Context & Ripple Effects

Twitter has been layering sound onto its product all year: in June it added 140-second audio recordings to tweets on iOS, and by late September it was expanding voice tweets and planning transcriptions for accessibility. Audio DMs extend that same capability from public timeline into private messaging.

The move echoes an earlier playbook — Twitter brought video recording into Direct Messages back in 2016 — and Brazil again serves as the proving ground, as it did for audio tweets. Within months the experiment graduated to a broader iOS test of 140-second voice DMs in India, Brazil, and Japan, suggesting this announcement was the opening step of a staged rollout.

First-order effects

  • Twitter users in Brazil become the first test group for recorded voice messages inside DMs, on iOS first — the same device-and-market sequencing used for the June audio tweets launch.

Second-order effects

  • If the test follows the audio-tweets path, expect rapid expansion to more iOS markets plus a transcription feature, since Twitter had already committed to captions as the accessibility companion for voice content.

Third-order effects

  • Twitter keeps converging public broadcasting and private messaging around the same rich-media primitives — audio now spans tweets and DMs the way video has since 2016 — pointing toward a product where format parity between timelines and inboxes is the default.

The trend: Twitter is rolling expressive media formats — audio, like video before it — outward from public tweets into private DMs, using single-country iOS tests as the staging mechanism.

Discussion

  • @huntermoonshot @huntermoonshot on x
    2019 VCs: so you're building voicemail? Ew 2020 VCs: how can we bring voice messaging back? https://twitter.com/...
  • @andreagonram Andrea Gonzlez-Ramrez on x
    yet another opportunity for me to harass my friends with long voice messages that could be podcasts 🥰 https://twitter.com/...
  • @fucksimoncoweli @fucksimoncoweli on x
    that's why this hell of an app was glitching earlier and suspended accounts LMAOO https://twitter.com/...
  • @briannawu Brianna Wu on x
    Do you know what would make the death threats I get with open DMs even better? If they were voicemails. https://www.theverge.com/...
  • @martinsfp Martin Sfp Bryant on x
    As reported by @MattNavarra almost two weeks ago! https://twitter.com/...
  • @jillfilipovic Jill Filipovic on x
    Does anyone actually listen to their voicemails / want to talk via phone to anyone but their immediate family and closest friends? https://twitter.com/...
  • @seamushughes Seamus Hughes on x
    What I've always thought was missing from the random extremist death threat DMs was a voice. Can't wait to hear them pronounce seamus. https://www.theverge.com/...
  • @tonyromm Tony Romm on x
    everyone: fix viral disinformation twitter: k voice dms https://twitter.com/...
  • @thatgirlondeck megan YELI MVP brown on x
    great now all the dudes who send me rude DMs will be able to actually yell them at me instead of using all caps to tell me how my nose & boobs get in the way of me knowing anything about sports https://twitter.com/...
  • @wongmjane Jane Manchun Wong on x
    Am I the only one who just prefers text based communication over talking? https://twitter.com/...
  • @taylorlorenz Taylor Lorenz on x
    Excited to start leaving everyone on here voicemails https://www.theverge.com/...
  • @markgurman Mark Gurman on x
    Please no. https://twitter.com/...
  • @backlon Dieter Bohn on x
    Slide whistle into their DMs https://twitter.com/...