Twitter is now testing its clubhouse-style voice chat rooms

Twitter has begun testing the Spaces feature, the voice-activated chat rooms it first announced last month. In the thread announcing the test, the company said that a very small group of users would be given the ability to create Spaces, but that in theory anyone could join them – although who gets access to a particular space depends on the user who created it. .

Twitter last month outlined how women and people from other marginalized communities would be the first people to access Spaces, groups more exposed to abuse and harassment than others when trying to participate in conversations in regular, comment-based discussions on the platform .

Moderation seems to be a big focus of Spaces. Creators can control who can or cannot speak in the Space, and the first version includes reporting and blocking functions.

Other features being tested include emoji responses, being able to share tweets in a space, and a ‘very early version’ of live speech transcription.

At this point, it seems that joining a Space only works from the Twitter mobile app – if you try to join over the web, you’ll just get to the ‘Page not found’ error. Oddly enough, to participate in a Periscope integration, it must be enabled. That’s the livestream service Twitter just announced is shutting down, so it remains to be seen how Twitter plans to handle the tech backend of its voice chats once Periscope disappears.