Twitter Is Getting Video and Audio Calls

Twitter users will soon have access to another social feature that’ll let users call each other right from within the social platform itself, according to Elon Musk. The feature itself was announced on Thursday alongside a couple of specifics on the devices that this’ll work on and other info, but we don’t yet have a release date for the feature. It’s also unknown if it’ll be limited to Twitter’s premium subscribers in any way, but seeing how most other features are locked behind a paywall that way or at least offer more to subscribers, there’s a good chance this feature will follow suit.

In a similar fashion to how most new Twitter features are announced, we learned of the new video and phone calls through a tweet from Musk where he offhandedly told people that the feature was on the way. Again, no release date was given, but here’s what we know about calling people via Twitter.

Phone/Video Calls on Twitter

According to Musk, people won’t need phone numbers tied to their accounts in any way to make calls on Twitter regardless of if the call’s going to be via video or audio. He said that Twitter would be the “effective global address book” which suggests that this feature is part of Musk’s larger plans to make Twitter the all-in-one platform for social needs and beyond similar to WeChat in China. 

The feature will supposedly work on iOS and Android devices as well as through the PC, too, if you’re using the web version of Twitter. We’ve heard talks previously of video improvements on Twitter in terms of quality and how long the uploaded videos could run for, but there’s been nothing said so far about what the quality of these phone and video calls will look like.

Calling Anyone on Twitter?

We learned a bit about the feature from Musk’s tweet, but many questions about it remain, particularly where security and privacy concerned. If the feature is truly open to anybody and everybody and isn’t gated by Twitter’s premium subscription, what will be the constraints put on the feature? Will people have to be mutual followers of each other before they’re able to call each other, or can anyone call somebody at a whim? The former seems like a more reasonable option as it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where people get into an argument on Twitter and spam someone with attempted calls. Targeted harassment will also be a concern, so it makes sense that the feature would have to be gated in some way to limit how people could abuse it. 

As for Twitter’s premium subscribers, it’s likely they’ll either get something like better video call quality or longer call durations if there’s to be a limit on how long calls can last so that people aren’t on permanent calls. More details on the feature should be revealed in the future closer to the time that it’s implemented, whenever that may be.