Twitter Adds Video Sharing and Group Messaging Functionality

Video sharing is certainly a hot topic in the digital marketing world these days, and there has been a great deal of talk recently about Facebook’s massive leaps in this regard. Now, Twitter is attempting to make its own waves by rolling out a new video feature as well as group messaging functionality in its app. One of the primary reasons for the addition of these new features is likely to be an attempt to appeal to advertisers, as a way to compete with other social networks for marketing dollars.

Both video sharing and group messaging have proven to be very popular on other social networks, such as Facebook and Instagram, making Twitter’s move in this direction a logical step for the company. In the past, the only way for Twitter users to upload videos was through the limited 6-second video app, Vine. Additionally, users were only able to send private messages to individuals. Now, with the launch of its two new features, Twitter is providing a more robust experience for its users.

Although Twitter is a hotbed for viral content, it’s no secret that its user growth rate has struggled to keep up with others. These two new features may help the platform to succeed in the ongoing popularity competition between social networks. “We have some of the best content creators in the world using Twitter daily, and we think that this is going to unlock and strengthen a bunch of our existing use cases as well,” said Jinen Kamdar, a Twitter Product Manager.

Twitter’s new video sharing feature allows users to shoot and edit the content before posting it, with the allowable video length being up to 30 seconds. Alternatively, Twitter for iPhone users can upload videos directly from the camera roll of their smartphone or tablet. This functionality will be coming to Android soon as well.

To record a video on Twitter, users can simply tap and hold on the phone’s screen. Multiple segments can be recorded and can subsequently be rearranged in the preferred order to create the final video. For viewing videos in the Twitter feed, a user must tap on the videos as they will not start playing automatically.

“We designed our camera to be simple to use so you can capture and share life’s most interesting moments as they happen,” Kamdar wrote in a blog post. “In just a few taps you can add a video to unfolding conversations, share your perspective of a live event, and show your everyday moments instantly, without ever having to leave the app. Viewing and playing videos is just as simple: videos are previewed with a thumbnail and you can play them with just one tap.”

Surely, Twitter sees the addition of this new video feature as a way to increase advertising on its platform. Once users become accustomed to seeing videos appearing in their streams, we can expect to start seeing video ads amongst them. Although some brands have been running Promoted Tweets that contain 6-second Vine videos since last year, the new ability to include longer videos will widen the possibilities greatly for marketers.

It’s not clear what effect this longer video functionality will have on Vine, but Twitter has indicated the two will coexist, to be used for different purposes. While Vine is used for short-form entertainment, the new Twitter video can be used for breaking news and offering first-hand perspectives during major events.

The new video feature will be rolled out to users over the next several days. Kamdar explained the team found the 30-second time limit to be long enough to give posters “breathing room and freedom” to capture what they wanted, yet short enough so that it wouldn’t deter users from watching the videos, as “it’s not a serious time investment.”

The other new feature the company is rolling out will allow group messaging for Twitter users, providing the ability to set up conversations with up to 20 people. These users do not have to be following each other to participate. Additionally, the group chats can be saved and named with the ability for anyone in the participating group to rename them.

In the past, Twitter has favored the concept of public messages, with some industry experts seeing the company as being neglectful of its private Direct Message system. Clearly, the social network is making a change with the addition of its new group messaging feature, providing the company with the possibility of competing with Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and WhatsApp in this regard.

Both of these additions are interesting moves for Twitter, and we’ll be closely watching user responses to see whether or not the new functionality helps the platform to grow in popularity amongst both users and marketers.