Twitter Video Service Rumours Abound

by Startacus Admin

It just wouldn't be a new year without a fresh attempt by Twitter to translate its phenomenal popularity into cold hard profits; although I’m sure they’d settle for breaking-even at this point.

The chirpy social media platform has for quite some time been coming under intense financial scrutiny, with many in the biz questioning whether it will ever be able to stem the flow of its capital haemorrhage.

Perhaps this is the year?

With its little eyes squarely on the YouTubes and Vevos of this world, it has been widely speculated that Twitter will later this year make its most significant addition to date, in the form of a new video service; or at the very least vastly improved video sharing capabilities.

Rumours and wild conjecture have been rife in recent weeks, after Twitter’s VP of Products wrote;

“But aside from just watching video more easily on Twitter, you should be able to record, edit and share your own videos natively on Twitter too. Alongside short looping Vine videos, we think you’ll have fun sharing what’s happening in your world through native video. You can expect to see this in the first half of next year.”

Whilst hard facts are in severely short supply regarding the specifics of any Twitter video service that may come to pass, rumours abound. At the risk of becoming gossip-mongers, here’s a few things that have been suggested as possible features:

• The Twitter Video Player will be capable of hosting videos of up to 10 minutes in length and will initially support mp4 and mov files.

• This new video service will only support videos that are hosted by Twitter specifically, and not those of established video giants like Vevo and YouTube.

• There will be no limit on the size of video file that can be uploaded to the service- meaning that video of potentially dazzling could be possible.

• Videos will never include promos or embedded advertisements

But of course, this is all still conjecture at this stage.

Why would Twitter do this?

I mean, what could a vast empirical site like Twitter possible have to gain from adding a perfectly nice (though arbitrary) new function like this? I suspect perhaps that they are playing the long game.

They know, as most folks in the biz do, that video has the uncanny ability to rewrite internet fortunes. Advertising revenues churned up though video far and exceed those possible through other online engagements, mostly because it is a medium that advertisers feel inherently more comfortable with; given its close resemblance to the old advertising favourite, TV.

A video service, like the one being hinted at, could bring with it more visitors, better quality engagements, more premium advertisers and ultimately shed loads of cash.

For Twitter the results which come from this latest addition could prove the difference between commercial viability and long term failure.

What does it mean for your business?

For the vast majority of businesses, these rumours will mean very little; just a nice potential add-on to a social media platform that performs reasonably well at spreading the word of your business. Others I suspect will be taking a far more optimistic stance in relation to the possibilities, with the prospect of easier, more effective and better quality video sharing with their Twitter community (and indeed the wider world) a very welcome addition to their online activity.

We will be watching this space closely to see how things develop over the coming months.

Why not take a look at some of these other twitter related posts?

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• #twitter
• #twitter video
• #video service

Published on: 6th January 2015