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Twitter Adds Ability To Record Audio in Tweets (axios.com) 30

Posted by msmash from the for-what-it-is-worth dept.
Twitter said Wednesday that it will add voice messages to tweets -- allowing up to 140 seconds of audio. From a report: Twitter is already the go-to platform for breaking news in the U.S. and often around the world. Voice Tweets will add a new dimension to breaking news for the site, as users can record what's happening around them, or record their thoughts and reflections immediately and post them as events unfold. Voice Tweets will appear in Twitter's timeline alongside other regular text tweets. To listen, users will tap the image of the user in the center of the voice tweet. The tweets can play audio while users continue to scroll. For users that go over the 140 seconds, a new audio tweet will be added to the timeline, and threaded to the previous audio tweet.
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Twitter Adds Ability To Record Audio in Tweets More

Twitter Adds Ability To Record Audio in Tweets

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  • 140 seconds? The supposed technical rationale this time?

    • Do you really want to hear the president mumble on for longer than that?

      • I have an auditory rationale filter. I don't hear people, I just hear positions.

      • I don't want to hear the president mumble at all.

        Maybe I'm not the target audience but this seems like the worst direction possible for Twitter to go in.

        * It means you won't be able to use Twitter while listening to music, or anything else.
        * No more quick scanning of tweets. Are you really going to sit there and click 'play' on hundreds of tweets just to hear a load of background noise and mumbling?

        This is about as useful as all those Youtube "how to..." videos that take 10 minutes to explain something that

        • This is about as useful as all those Youtube "how to..." videos that take 10 minutes to explain something that could be explained in three lines of text.

          Oh God yeah, the ones for which every single Google search turns up some idiotic video as the result, consisting of four minutes of pushing some sponsored product, four minutes of an explanation of the problem for halfwits, a minute of going over the setup, then "and the trick is to pull the release catch that doesn't exist on the version of the product you're using", following by the remaining minute of more sponsored product placement.

    • Not only that, but

      "For users that go over the 140 seconds, a new audio tweet will be added to the timeline, and threaded to the previous audio tweet."

      So they even have a workaround built-in to avoid their own self-imposed limits.

      WTF is going on in that company? Are they just insane?

      What's next? Limit photos and images to 140x140 pixels, 140 colours?

    • 140 seconds?? Thatâ(TM)s too long and terribly unfair to citizens of countries that have presidents who canâ(TM)t put together a chain of thoughts coherently.

    • Neat. Texts and voicemail, now all they need to do is add the ability to make phonecalls and they'll have invented "the phone system".
  • ...140 frames of video ?!?
    • So like 5 seconds of video? Do you really thing the young generations have that kind of attention span?

      • Well, Vine was just 6 seconds max, wasn't it? And it had a cult following...

      • Who said anything about 28 frames per second?

        There's already a lot of idiots out there using YouTube as a photo slideshow with voiceover, I don't see why Twitter couldn't do 140 frames of video at one frame per second to match their stupid 140 seconds limit on audio.

  • Audio is Inefficient (Score:3)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Wednesday June 17, 2020 @02:50PM (#60193994)
    There's a reason almost no one wants to watch a news video instead of browse an article. Even then, they should have made it 10-20 seconds (i.e. the time it takes to read 140-280 characters) instead of over 2 minutes, which is ridiculous.

    • There's a reason almost no one wants to watch a news video instead of browse an article. Even then, they should have made it 10-20 seconds (i.e. the time it takes to read 140-280 characters) instead of over 2 minutes, which is ridiculous.

      Glad I'm not the only one that sees things this way. When I look something up and a youtube video pops up in the results, I never watch the video to find the answer to a question.
      The same is true of news sites that shove a video into an article. I'm not sitting around trying to watch TV to get basic information. I'd much rather glance over it, and if interested read through everything.

      • I never watch the video to find the answer to a question.

        Me either. Who the fuck sits through those awful videos to get the answer when two lines of text will do?

  • Twitter and News in the same sentence (Score:3)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Wednesday June 17, 2020 @02:51PM (#60194006)
    Some people have some pretty funny ideas about reality.

    Just my 2 cents ;)

    • Just have to pipe in and AGREE - now the text drivel passing for 'NEWS' is going to provide total surround-sound environment saturation !
      Maybe,just MAYBE, the mindless 'droids following all this just MIGHT be so distracted on their phones as to do the human race a favor, and walk in front of a bus or truck or into an open manhole.

      Yes, Martha, stupidity and ignorance ARE potentially fatal conditions.
      Hell, at least ignorance is correctable with personal effort to educate themselves.
      STUPIDITY, on the other ha

  • wtf (Score:2)

    by spitzak ( 4019 )

    Why not use voice recognition and turn spoken tweets into text. That would actually be useful to people who want to present tweets faster. There is a reason people don't click on videos and sound playback.

    If you really want to hear a voice they could offer that as an option. Or use a computer-generated voice and read the text (that would work for tweets no matter how they are recorded). Or wait for the late-night tv shows where all the hosts have perfected their fake Trump accents to read his tweets.

  • The signal-to-noise ratio on Twitter is already abysmally low... this is only going to make it worse.

  • verbally assault and harass everyone with different political views. This will be a lot more fun for them, than just banning those who do not walk the party line.

    Just my 2 cents ;)

  • Get ready to hear Trump flushing his gold toilet.

  • Twitter is a platform for accusing other users of racism and proceeding to dox them.
  • Seems as time marches forward, twitter is leaving the SMS-based microblog model, with 140 character messages, 19 character @handles, and hashtags; and now it's changing into a full blogging platform with longer messages, threads, pins, bios, photos, video, audio, lists and so on. I think there was something special about the microblog, but they seem to think these moves are more profitable. Either they're right and will continue to dominate, or they're wrong and will flounder. But with each step like this,

  • ... intended to add to the body of work that includes face, fingerprint, and voice recognition.

    The gov gonna get those people talking off camera.

  • Instead of only being able to post a constant stream of mental farts people can now post actual farts.

  • If it allows me to post audio clips that I've recorded ahead of time, this could be a great way to shoot out song ideas to my peeps.

    On the other hand, I have a hard enough time trying to read some people's thoughts written out. I'm not sure I want to be subjected to listening to them as well.

    I suppose they really just wanted to stop being accused of being a theoretical shouting match and turn the site into a real one.

  • Lovely, now we get 140 seconds of "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
  • This will in no way make me like Twitter more. It might however, make me hate twitter more.

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