This test is that promise landing in production — voice messages capped at the same 140 seconds as voice tweets, rolled out first on iOS in India, Brazil, and Japan. The market choice matters: two of the three are markets where voice-first communication habits run deep, making them a natural proving ground before any wider release.
First-order effects
iOS users in India, Brazil, and Japan can now send up to 140 seconds of audio in direct messages, giving Twitter's DM product its richest format beyond the text, photo, and video it has offered since the 2015 group-DM era.
Second-order effects
The transcription work Twitter promised for voice tweets becomes the obvious next requirement for voice DMs too — without it, private audio messages carry the same accessibility and skimmability gaps that forced the earlier commitment.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds — feature debuts in public tweets, then migrates into DMs — Twitter's private messaging steadily converges with its public product, turning DMs from a plain-text utility into a full media channel and raising the moderation bar that applies to private audio at scale.
The trend: Twitter is systematically porting its audio features from public tweets into private messaging, using India, Brazil, and Japan as its launch markets.
🎤test,🎤test: Starting today, you'll be able to record and send voice messages in DMs 😉 Here's how👇 PS. The experiment will be rolled out in phases. https://twitter.com/...
I don't check my voicemails and I will not be checking these either Disappointed twitter is doing this after the concerns women raised about how fleets handle replies, and the accessibility concerns raised about voice tweets https://twitter.com/...
Nope. I don't even hit play on WeChat voice messages and if they make a habit of it that person is getting removed from my contacts. https://twitter.com/...
Say @Twitter @TwitterSupport this is one of your worst ideas ever. Turning the harassment that goes on in DMs up another notch and creating more content paths that lack accessibility for all sure has all the optics of a company that just doesn't give a shit. https://twitter.com/.…
Really hope Big Tech realizes that as soon as covid is over, I want to go back to never hearing people's voices on my phone ever again https://twitter.com/...
2 minute 20 second podcasts with the ability to comment after listening? Should have a way to curate top/interesting viewpoints. Could see subscribing to 5-25 of these. Especially if they are short questions to think on. https://twitter.com/...