DeSantis chose Twitter spaces to announce his run. What is it?

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announces he will run for president on Wednesday at 6 p.m. on Twitter Spaces, a live audio streaming platform on Twitter where people gather and talk online in real time.

Times reporters will provide analysis during the announcement, which you can listen to at 6 p.m. with a Twitter account.

Twitter launched Spaces in May 2021, becoming one of the first social media platforms to create a dedicated audio streaming feature. The idea was simple: give people a way to talk and listen in rooms focused on specific topics.

Spaces was Twitter’s answer to Clubhouse, a social livestreaming app that grew rapidly during the pandemic after its launch in March 2020 and showcased the power of audio platforms. While Twitter once had a video live streaming service called Periscope, the wide availability of other video streaming tools led the company to shut it down in 2021 and focus on its audio offerings.

Any Twitter user can join a Space, which has hosts who set up the audio chat room and choose the topic to discuss. Hosts moderate their own Spaces and can choose people to speak or call on people in the audience to ask questions or make comments. Some Spaces have had tens of thousands of listeners, though most only have audiences of tens.

Twitter has never released figures on the popularity of Spaces. Elon Musk, who bought Twitter for $44 billion last year, is a user and fan of the feature. He has often appeared on Spaces to talk about his various businesses and conduct interviews with journalists, most recently including two from the BBC and CNBC.

Twitter is still working out Spaces’ kinks. The feature can be buggy and sometimes kick users out or crash. In December, it stopped working after tens of thousands of users joined an audio chat room to listen to Mr. Musk discuss why Twitter had banned several journalists from the social network.