While Twitter is being bought by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, he’s been seen testing two features lately – one where you can listen to podcasts in his app on iOS and Android, and another where you can ‘cotweet’ with another user to post a tweet.
However, while the company is testing how its users can tweet each other and so on, Elon Musk’s deal to buy the company appears to be in jeopardy, mainly due to spam and bot data being unverifiable, according to The Washington Post (opens in new tab).
That means the data that Musk wanted in May, which caused the deal to be suspended, is not holding up to scrutiny.
It’s an uncertain time for Twitter, but looking at these two features, one can’t help but wonder – what’s the point of them?
Analysis: One almost makes sense, the other doesn’t.
CoTweets (opens in new tab) it’s exactly what you expect; when composing a tweet, you can add someone you follow and someone who follows you, and once you both approve the tweet, it will be sent with both of you showing as the author.
It’s a simple feature that can be used if you’re part of a project, for example, or if you want to announce something without retweeting someone else’s account.
It is currently in testing in the US, Canada and Korea for select users. Still, Twitter made a point of mentioning that it is currently an experiment and could be turned off at any time if the feature is deemed a glitch.
That’s why we’re going to another feature in testing that the company hasn’t announced yet, and which I don’t see any reason for.
Twitter is working on in-app podcast player pic.twitter.com/ACNAfwmMfBJuly 7, 2022
It looks like there will be a dedicated podcast tab next to your timeline, mentions, and profile icons in the Twitter app. From Wong’s tweet, it would be fair to assume that some external podcasts could be available on his Spaces feature, where anyone on Twitter can create an audio conversion, with people able to invite with their questions.
On the one hand, it feels like the natural next step for Spaces, but on the other hand, it feels irrelevant and confusing, especially when there are dedicated apps like Overcast and Pocketcasts that can manage your podcasts more easily.
Sometimes features are created just to see if they make sense – we’ve all been in similar situations. We think something is a good idea, but when it goes further and closer to reality, it turns out to be a bad idea.
This is where I suspect podcasts will go to Twitter as this feature is most tested. Instead, let Spaces be its own thing. Allow Twitter users to have their own shows on Spaces, instead of bringing in established podcast series and trying to compete directly with podcast apps.