Amid Controversies, Twitter Begins Testing New Voice Recording Feature in India

The past few days have been rough for Twitter in India, after the government criticised the app for not acting briskly against provocative accounts spreading chaos amid farmers' protests in the country. Aiming to teach Twitter a lesson, Indians, including several government officials, migrated to its India-made rival app Koo.

At a time when #BanTwitter is trending in the social media in India, the US-headquartered app has turned its focus back to work by kickstarting the test phase of its latest feature, starting with India. 

The micro-blogging platform on Wednesday announced that it is now testing the “voice recording” feature for its Direct Messages that will allow users to converse quicker and more easily with each other. The duration limit for these voice notes is 140 seconds.

In a bid to explain to users the functionality and operation of this feature, Twitter has posted two separate videos in both, English and Hindi.

🎤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. pic.twitter.com/aqQM6h9sof

— Twitter India (@TwitterIndia) February 17, 2021

pic.twitter.com/4skZzL4Zj4

— Twitter India (@TwitterIndia) February 17, 2021

​Users will have to tap the “stop” icon when done recording the voice note to listen to the recording before sending or deleting it. 

Along with India, the feature is also being tested in Japan and Brazil. 

It is noteworthy that Twitter is adding the voice recording feature for messages after 15 years of its launch in 2006. Other popular social networking apps like WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat and Skype, among others, have already been offering the feature for years now. 

Users, however, have requested that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey add the “edit” feature to tweets for a significantly long time – which has not been introduced, as of now.