Twitter Gears up for Major Video Overhaul: A Step into the Future of Social Media

Videos have undeniably become a central component of our digital interactions. They encapsulate the adage ‘a picture is worth a thousand words,’ and social media giants have been quick to incorporate this visual phenomenon into their platforms. Whether it’s live streaming or pre-recorded videos, these platforms continuously evolve their video features, adapting to the changing digital landscape and the desires of their global user base. This week, we witnessed Tumblr going live, bringing the allure of the present moment to followers, and Twitter unrestricted the use of Periscope to all its users. However, Twitter’s revitalization doesn’t stop there.

Just like Facebook, Twitter plans to introduce a dedicated video section within its app. This feature, nicknamed ‘Watch Mode,’ will be reminiscent of YouTube’s functionality, offering users an assortment of videos to watch and facilitating access to related or suggested videos geared towards their interests. Facebook introduced a similar feature, with an advertising model akin to YouTube’s, albeit with a twist: while on YouTube, advertisements are often skippable and appear before the video; on Facebook, ads discreetly pop into view as you’re watching the video or between videos. The advent of Twitter’s ‘Watch Mode’ feature promises a seamless viewing experience for its users.

In addition to ‘Watch Mode,’ Twitter is set to introduce a change to its Vine app. Known for its characteristic six-second videos, Vine will soon allow users to go beyond the quick clip format and create videos of up to 140 seconds, an ode to Twitter’s signature 140 character limitation. Interestingly, Twitter’s own video limit is also making the jump from 30 to 140 seconds.

Much like its competitors, Vine is also strengthening its ties with content creators, implementing a 30-70 revenue split on advertising. Under this model, Vine will retain 30 percent of the revenue, while the remaining 70 percent will go to the content creators. In a bid to back digital artists and incentivize content creation, Twitter is launching a standalone app, Engage, which serves as an analytical tool to track the performance of content and gauge user interaction.

Twitter’s ultimate aim with these changes? To stop users from posting links to external platforms like YouTube or Instagram within Vine and have them stay put within Twitter’s ecosystem instead. These up and coming updates are potentially big moves for Twitter and could increase the platform’s advertising revenue considerably.

Since Jack Dorsey resumed his role as Twitter’s CEO, he has vowed to make significant changes to the platform following a streak of underwhelming results. These recent updates may signal a turning point for Twitter. Only time will tell whether these changes will be transformational for the platform.

Editor’s note: Our apologies for the inconvenience caused due to the downtime experienced last week, which resulted in this article being republished. At TechBooky, we are continually striving to minimize such incidents in the future.