Twitter has just announced its purchase of Breaker, a social podcast app. As a result of the acquisition, Breaker will be shutting down its services.
Twitter Furthers Its Journey in Audio
The Breaker app launched in 2016, and thrived by combining podcasts with social elements. Users were able to like and comment on podcast episodes, making the app feel more like a community when compared to other podcast apps.
A post on the Breaker blog revealed that the Breaker team is joining forces with Twitter. Unfortunately for existing users, the app will close down on January 15, 2021. The post also provided instructions on how users can transfer their podcast subscriptions to another listening app.
Erik Berlin, the CEO of Breaker, said that the team is “now inspired to go even further in re-imagining how we communicate with each other, beyond the scope of traditional podcasts.”
As Twitter starts to integrate audio into its platform, it makes sense that it would hire a team of experts. In December 2020, Twitter unveiled a feature called Spaces. This feature will allow users to engage in live voice chats in designated chatrooms.
Although Spaces is still in its testing phase, the acquisition of Breaker will likely speed up its release. Leah Culver, Breaker co-founder, celebrated the new partnership in a Tweet.
In work news, I’m joining Twitter to help build @TwitterSpaces! 🥳 While I’ll very much miss @breaker, I’m so excited to help create the future of audio conversations. https://t.co/0Y8fkbCIFm
— Leah Culver (@leahculver) January 4, 2021
She clearly noted that she’s “excited to help create the future of audio conversations,” by working with Twitter to build Spaces.
As of right now, it’s unclear what kind of features the Breaker team will be contributing to Spaces. But if Twitter made the effort to acquire the entire team, it must be serious about making the feature work. The platform has already launched audio Tweets, which the Breaker team can likely also help Twitter perfect.
When Spaces finally gets released to the public, we can only hope that it doesn’t flop. Twitter introduced Fleets in November, 2020, allowing users to create ephemeral posts that resemble Snapchat and Instagram Stories. Due to an array of bugs plaguing the feature at launch, it wasn’t the most well-received.
How Will Spaces Change Twitter?
Twitter was built on short clippings of text that users send out in the form of a Tweet. Adding audio integration could alter the way users communicate on the platform.
But the question is: will users take advantage of voice chats on a largely non-audio platform? It’s clearly a risk that Twitter is willing to take. Time will tell if the feature takes off, or if it becomes one of those untouched features that fall by the wayside.