Twitter plans to unveil its next video product soon, says a report from Re/code, which cites a source familiar with the company’s plans. The new feature will come in the form of an app and will help in enhancing user engagement on the micro-blogging site.
Similar yet different from Wine
Using the new app, users will be able to shoot, edit and post videos directly. This way there will be more clips on the platform. At present, users have just one option for posting videos on the website, and that is through Twitter’s standalone six-second video app, Vine. Twitter hopes the new feature will help it in increasing usage of its platform with more users sharing and creating videos.
The new feature has some similarities with Vine, but at the same time, it is different in many ways. The feature has already been used by a few people who say that, using it, they can upload videos from the camera roll of their phones along with shooting and editing videos. Just like Vine, this feature too will limit the duration of the videos to a certain fixed time limit. An experiment has already been done on a user-uploaded video by Twitter with a 20-second time limit, according to the report.
Twitter must act quickly
Arch-rival Facebook is making similar efforts to push its video feature. Recently the social networking site said more than a billion clips are viewed by users daily on the platform. Native video sharing capabilities are offered by other social networks as well, including Snapchat and Instagram.
Last March, Twitter rolled out a video unit for a shortlisted group of verified users and advertisers. With the video unit, the selected group could upload videos of 10 minutes in length through the web. For the regular users, the company has plans to launch a native video tool in the first half of 2015, according to company executives. It has to be seen whether or not the company will be able to launch the feature in the promised amount of time, as previously Twitter has been criticized for moving slowly on product changes.
The new tool, when it is launched, will be a significant addition to the company’s product portfolio as rivals are already way ahead of the micro-blogging site in terms of video capabilities.
