Elon Musk not too long ago 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 lively on all platforms, enabling you to maintain viewing a video clip as you scroll by the app.
That’ll make it simpler to multitask in-stream, versus, say, watching in your TV display whereas additionally scrolling by tweets. Which might additionally assist Twitter improve its worth as a singular leisure and knowledge answer, versus being, historically, a supplementary aspect.
I imply, in lots of circumstances Twitter’s already the first supply of consideration for customers all through the day. However whereas ‘second-screening’ has been a key pattern amongst Twitter customers for years, Twitter has by no means been in a position to successfully faucet into this conduct, and maximize consumer engagement primarily based on a number of inputs.
Twitter has tried other 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, on the whole, customers have to this point been extra aligned with conventional discovery and consumption behaviors, and utilizing Twitter in-between, in advert and recreation breaks.
If there’s a strategy to merge the 2, that might certainly make Twitter a extra helpful platform, and picture-in-picture may very well be one strategy to make this a actuality. And possibly now, customers will really be extra receptive to having a number of feeds on display – particularly if you additionally take into account the rise of tendencies 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 introduced to us, through a TV or film display. However possibly 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 underneath incoming CEO Linda Yaccarino. Yaccarino’s expertise is in TV streaming, and plainly that is the course 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.
Turning into extra of a hub for all kinds of reports and leisure may very well be a extra viable progress path for Twitter to comply with – particularly if it might probably persuade information retailers to begin broadcasting on to the app. And with the following US election cycle developing, that might assist to boost the deal with the platform, and get extra customers spending extra time within the app.
On one other entrance, Twitter’s additionally now experimenting with a native video download option in the app.
Many customers have been requesting this for a while, and once more, with Twitter set to place extra deal with video content material, this may very well be one other helpful 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 best way wherein Twitter’s rolling them out, with out fanfare, might additionally decrease their potential impression. However collectively, Twitter’s making important investments into enhancing its video service, which, as famous, seems set to turn out to be a key aspect of the following stage of Elon’s Twitter 2.0 push.
