TikTok is the most popular social network at the moment, and that has caused many other platforms to copy its main functions to try to overshadow it. Unsuccessful, yes. The last to join this tiresome trend has been Twitter. Those led by Parag Agrawal have presented a new video player And what is more important, a section entirely dedicated to these contents.
Twitter points out that, over time, videos have become a fundamental part of the public conversation. They also mention that they are an excellent way for users to express themselves. For these reasons, and because there are some videos that tend to accumulate millions of views on the platform —that of Dead Pool 3for example—, consider it appropriate to improve the video viewing experience.
The first step has been to renew your player, which will be able to expand videos to full screen —like TikTok— at the touch of a button. Twitter ensures that this will allow them to offer a more “immersive” experience. But the main novelty is that, by swiping up, you can access other videos that you might find interesting. Thus, it will be possible to navigate in a timeline of suggested content. And if you want to go back to the original tweet, just press the return arrow.
Twitter is aware that, to encourage video playback, it is not enough to improve the player. For this reason, in the “Explore” tab a carousel of recommended videos will be displayed. Fortunately, from the screenshots shared, this new interface element isn’t too intrusive.
“With our new carousel, you can now easily find more videos you like along with tweets and trends you might be interested in. Just open the Explore tab to discover some of the most popular videos being shared on Twitter.”
Twitter already tests its news
When will these features be released? At the moment, both the player and the video carousel are in the testing phase for a limited number of users on iOS and Android. Therefore, if the experience is received positively, it will surely not take long to see it available to everyone.
A key point in Twitter’s strategy, and one that is far from Instagram’s decisions, is that its proposal to give more importance to videos does not involve completely altering the interface. The improved player, a priori, seems to be a good addition. Also is true that It will depend a lot on whether the algorithm is really capable of showing interesting videosotherwise I do not predict a good reception.
“We want to make it easy for everyone to use our service in the way that best suits their needs, and videos (including funny movie trailers) are an important part of that,” Twitter mentions.