Photos and videos now appear in users' feeds without having to click on a link
Twitter became an Internet phenomenon as a tool for posting short text messages, but now it also wants to feature multimedia content more prominently.
Previews of photos and videos will now appear on users' timeline streams, whereas before people had to click on links to see them. The new feature is available on Twitter's iOS and Android apps, as well as on its Web version.
The changes apply only to photos uploaded using Twitter, and to videos created with Twitter's Vine app. People still have to navigate to an outside page to see photos or videos from third-party services.
Users can expand the photos or watch the videos by tapping them on mobile and clicking on them on the desktop.
With this feature, Twitter wants to provide a more media-rich experience for users, and to better compete against big rivals like Instagram and Snapchat. "These rich tweets can bring your followers closer to what's happening," the company said in its announcement.
But the changes also come as Twitter faces pressure to build out its advertising business, as its public debut on the New York Stock Exchange looms.
Video ads constitute a major element of Twitter's advertising business, which generated 85 percent of the company's revenue last year, the company said on its IPO documents. Placing more video and photo content front and center in users' feeds, therefore, could give marketers an added incentive to advertise with Twitter.
Twitter has already partnered with more than a dozen broadcasters and media networks through its Amplify program, which places promotional video content in users' feeds. Some of those partners include Bloomberg TV, A&E and BBC America.
Zach Miners covers social networking, search and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow Zach on Twitter at @zachminers. Zach's e-mail address is zach_miners@idg.com
Creating a strong company culture may sound like a daunting task, but it’s actually pretty straightforward. In fact, company culture is created in exactly the same fashion as a religion or democracy. Behaviours created from the organisation’s inception are reinforced over time by leadership, attracting like-minded people and eventually reaching critical mass to become an accepted ‘truth’.
The question I get asked most regularly these days is: ‘Do I need to rebuild my company’s systems on Blockchain?’ And the answer, every time, is ‘No, you’re asking the wrong question’.
Throughout my career, I have witnessed a litany of brand names that profess to have a unique customer value proposition (CVP). In reality, however, they’ve had little more than a ‘value proposition’: A simple list of benefits applied to a general audience.
In this bonus last episode of this new podcast series, BrandHook MD, Pip Stocks, talks with former ANZ group general manager of marketing, Louise Eyres, talks about the importance of thinking like a customer and using intuition to solve customer painpoints.
Thanks for writing about chatbots. Definitely bots have the exciting future when it comes to customer engagement, transactional and conve...
Giridhar Prathap Reddy
Deloitte TMT Predictions: AR and mobile crucial for marketing success in 2018
Hi there! Thanks for this interesting article! I love to read about new technology and software that makes our lives easier. I'm looking ...
Julia Summer
Wartsila overhauls Web platforms to create ‘seamless’ brand experience across all devices
RE: Sales and marketing SLAs, often the choke point isn't the teams but them getting the data into the tools they want to use with the da...
Ed Fry
Why sales and marketing alignment is more important than ever
Thank you for the good and very helpful information. It is very interesting. I love all the things you share and see your beautiful creat...
รัตนาวดี ภูมิวรรณ
Former eHarmony marketing chief joins telco startup
Colin Kaepernick, not Mike Kapernick.
thisisw
Zenith's innovation leader: Mid-digital age not benefitting media, brands or consumers