Elon Musk just lately promised that new Twitter video updates would be coming through thick and fast, and he’s positively holding true to this, with two new video updates now being rolled out to Twitter customers.
First off, Twitter’s long-awaited picture-in-picture (PiP) playback window is now energetic on all platforms, enabling you to maintain viewing a video clip as you scroll via the app.
That’ll make it simpler to multitask in-stream, versus, say, watching in your TV display whereas additionally scrolling via tweets. Which might additionally assist Twitter improve its worth as a singular leisure and data resolution, versus being, historically, a supplementary aspect.
I imply, in lots of instances Twitter’s already the first supply of consideration for customers all through the day. However whereas ‘second-screening’ has been a key development amongst Twitter customers for years, Twitter has by no means been capable of successfully faucet into this habits, and maximize person engagement primarily based on a number of inputs.
Twitter has tried alternative ways to integrate video content with tweets, within the hopes of merging the 2, and changing into a extra ubiquitous single platform.
However whereas the idea of viewing tweets and streaming content material on a single display does seem to make sense, usually, customers have up to now been extra aligned with conventional discovery and consumption behaviors, and utilizing Twitter in-between, in advert and sport breaks.
If there’s a strategy to merge the 2, that would certainly make Twitter a extra useful platform, and picture-in-picture may very well be one strategy to make this a actuality. And perhaps now, customers will really be extra receptive to having a number of feeds on display – particularly while you additionally take into account the rise of traits like ‘sludge’ clips on TikTok, which current varied shifting elements inside a single show.
Previously, this will likely have been overwhelming, given our alignment to singular video feeds being offered to us, by way of a TV or film display. However perhaps now, consumption behaviors have shifted sufficient that customers will really be extra open to the PiP show, and it might resonate stronger with Twitter customers.
Twitter will definitely be hoping so, provided that it’ll be trying to make video content material extra of a spotlight beneath incoming CEO Linda Yaccarino. Yaccarino’s expertise is in TV streaming, and evidently that is the path that Twitter’s now heading in, with Tucker Carlson’s new Twitter exclusive show set to be the primary cab of the rank on this new push.
Changing into extra of a hub for all types of reports and leisure may very well be a extra viable development path for Twitter to observe – particularly if it will probably persuade information retailers to start out broadcasting on to the app. And with the following US election cycle developing, that would assist to reinforce the give attention to the platform, and get extra customers spending extra time on the app.
On one other entrance, Twitter’s additionally now experimenting with a native video download option on the app.
Many customers have been requesting this for a while, and once more, with Twitter set to place extra give attention to video content material, this may very well be one other useful addition to its presentation and manufacturing pipeline.
In isolation, every of those updates – together with variable playback speed controls and 1080p uploads – could seem comparatively minor, whereas the way in which wherein Twitter’s rolling them out, with out fanfare, might additionally decrease their potential influence. However collectively, Twitter’s making vital investments into bettering its video service, which, as famous, seems set to turn into a key aspect of the following stage of Elon’s Twitter 2.0 push.
