Twitter’s voice tweet and the rise of audio-based social media

Twitter recently rolled out a new feature to a limited group of iPhone users. The new feature, voice tweet, allows users to tweet with their voice.
While it’s only available to a few iPhone users, anyone on Twitter can see, hear and engage with voice tweets. "Tweeting with your voice is not too different from tweeting with text. Each voice tweet captures up to 140 seconds of audio", Twitter said . “Once you reach the time limit for a tweet, a new voice tweet start automatically to create a thread".
The new feature released on June 17 angered Android users. More so the iPhone users that were left out. But 'testing a new feature' with a limited group of users is not outlandish on the social media platform.
Twitter has been testing a feature that "encourages people to read a linked article before retweeting it" only on Android. Just as it is "running a limited experiment on iOS with a prompt that gives you the option to revise your reply before it’s published if it uses language that could be harmful".
Twitter rarely tests new features across the board. It either tests with a limited group of people globally on Twitter for iOS, Android, and twitter.com ( conversation setting ); Android and iOS users in a particular country (à la Brazil for fleets and Canada for hiding replies ); twitter.com ( schedule tweet ); or only iOS users ( send tweets via DM and RTs with comment ).
Running a limited experiment of voice tweet on iOS is precautionary. Although people still flacked it for lacking accessibility like captions. "I do worry that if this becomes a prominent feature, deaf users will be left out", a deaf journalist tweeted .
Twitter’s voice tweet: #AndroidVoiceMatter
It is pertinent to note that a Nigerian caught the audio bug before this global uptick. In 2014, Tomi Walker developed a social app, Orbi , that connects people through voice. But the project failed.  Walker is currently the Head of Growth and Content at TQG Digital.
Similarly, in an Instagram post (now deleted) Nicki Minaj said she had mooted the idea for voice tweet in 2017. And it is believable because Chris Messina invented hashtag on Twitter.
There’s always been a tussle between Android and Apple users. More so on the microblogging platform. Despite the advancement of Samsung, Oneplus and other Android OEMs, iPhone is still the ultimate status symbol.
Last year, Twitter re-introduced a feature that shows which client was used to make a post. The feature, tweet source label , has stoked the rivalry between Twitter for Android and iPhone. Thus, a closed experiment of voice tweet with a few iPhone users riled up everyone left out. Particularly, because the feature is cool.
Musicians and voice-over artistes have made voice tweets. Football banter is also better with voice tweets.
Twitter has explained that "keeping the experiment to one platform lets us...