Twitter is Adding Podcasts to its Spaces Tab

Twitter announced today that it was integrating podcasts into Twitter Spaces, the platform’s live audio conversation feature. A redesigned Twitter Spaces tab is rolling out today on the company’s iOS and Android apps, and podcasts will only be available for a restricted group of english-speaking users for now.

“Integrating podcasts into Spaces, where audio conversations happen on Twitter, is another way we’re continuing to invest in audio creators,” Twitter explained in the announcement. By bringing podcasts into its Spaces tab, Twitter certainly hopes that users will spend more time in the app, a strategy that worked pretty well for Spotify.

As part of the redesigned Spaces tab, Twitter users will now see a selection of live and recorded content grouped by categories such as News, Music, Sports, and more. However, some users will also see a selection of the most popular podcasts in these new hubs.

“Our internal research indicates that 45% of people who use Twitter in the US also listen to podcasts monthly, so we’ll automatically suggest compelling podcasts to help people easily find and listen to the topics they want to hear more about. For example, if someone regularly interacts with Vox content on Twitter, they’ll probably see a Vox podcast in a Spaces hub,” the company explained.

Twitter users who get access to podcasts in the Spaces tab will also be able to improve the recommendation algorithm: Just like YouTube, the mobile apps will show thumbs up or thumbs down on podcast episodes.

If you found Twitter’s Spaces tab easy to avoid so far, maybe the integration of podcasts will finally change that. However, adding podcasts didn’t work well for Facebook, which shut down the podcasts platform you probably didn’t know it had in June. Earlier this year, LinkedIn also launched its own podcast network to attract more professional creators to the platform, though it’s too early to tell if the experiment has been successful.