A post on TechCrunch from yesterday claimed to offer details on Twitter’s previously announced native video service for users, but the company refuted the rumor. According to Twitter, the details uncovered on the video.twitter.com website refer to native videos for Twitter Amplify users, another initiative announced in August 2014.
As a user of the Twitter app for iOS, I’ve noticed native Twitter videos (promoted or not) for a while now. They’re actually not terrible: they don’t have all the options of YouTube, but the play inline with a card and have essential playback controls.
This tweet, for example:
As we get ready for #CES2015, here’s our look back at last year: https://t.co/iwM5RTl8pR
— The Verge (@verge) January 3, 2015
Looks like this on the iPhone:
I only noticed today, however, that The Verge’s video has a button to open an associated webpage in Twitter’s inline browser, which was new to me. I also didn’t know that videos could be minimized on the iPad, just like SoundCloud audio cards can be minimized on the iPhone:
Twitter Video is expected to be rolled out in the first half of this year, and I’m curious to see what the company will do with it. As a fan of Twitter’s move towards integrated cards on mobile, I think that native videos (that are longer than Vines) have potential to integrate nicely with other media types in the timeline. It’ll be interesting to see how users and companies that are currently using YouTube will react to native Twitter videos. Considering the impact that Twitter photos had on how content is shared on Twitter, I’d keep an eye on native videos enabled for every user (not just promoted tweets or selected publications).