5 Big Questions About Twitter's Move to Multimedia
Twitter slipped a new option into users' settings earlier today that hinted the service may soon display images and video inline with users' 140-character updates, much like Facebook does in its News Feed. Moments after it was seen and reported on, it was gone again.
With Twitter keeping mum, questions abound: What will this feature look like? Will it slow Twitter's already-taxed servers? And will people use it?
Twitter is keeping quiet about the possible new feature, first publicized by Mashable, but sent media this vague statement:
"We're constantly exploring features and settings. What you saw was a small test of a potential consumption setting for inline media. We show inline media on our own iPhone and Android apps."
So, Twitter, here are the top questions in our minds about the "potential" new feature.
5 Questions About The New Tweet Media
Twitter's servers have enough trouble keeping up with text tweets - will including photos and video in streams on Twitter.com result in even more Whales?
The answer will depend on the display size of the photos and video and whether Twitter is hosting the media. It will be easier for Twitter to scale if it displays only thumbnail-sized images, as it does in its iPhone and Android apps, and relies on third parties to host the media - TwitPic has a thumbnail API, for example.
"I'm not sure what their implementation looks like but it is difficult to get right. It could theoretically add more strain," said Jason Shellen, CEO of Thing Labs.
Shellen runs the media-rich Twitter Web client Brizzly, was the lead product manager in creating Google Reader and was at the startup that sold Blogger to Google back in the day. So when he says scaling hosted media display is hard to get right, he's got a solid background from which to say it.
Twitter will likely have to, at least for a time, store more images than its doing now. But this would be a feature that they'll have the ability to disable system-wide if load gets too high, much like trends and search.
Will Twitter ever host images and video themselves?
Hosting images and video and displaying them large enough to see within the stream without having to click through would keep users on Twitter.com and potentially make it easier for Twitter to monetize its 100 million-strong user base. But that would mean extra infrastructure to allow users to upload media to Twitter and extra servers to store it.
Will Twitter censor photos and images that appear on Twitter.com?
Displaying images and video as thumbnails, or possibly larger, could introduce a risque element to Twitter.com. Will the company go the route of Apple and take measures to keep users "free from porn" and other unsavory content, or will the company let the stream go uncensored, potentially opening the doors further to XXX spammers?
What does this mean for third party clients?
This is likely to be the latest incident of Twitter adding features that strains the relationship between Twitter and its third party developers, as when the company bought the mobile reader Tweetie and re-released it as an official Twitter app - unless the company can implement the new feature in a creative way.
Twitter client Brizzly displays full-size photos and videos in its stream.
Services like Twitpic host media and get revenue by displaying ads. This revenue source would disappear if users no longer need to click through to see photos or videos - unless Twitter works out special relationships with third party clients.
YFrog is the default photo service in Twitter's iPhone app, suggesting a financial agreement between the companies. Perhaps Twitter would work out similar revenue-sharing arrangements with other media services.
We haven't heard what the third party media clients are thinking, but Shellen of Brizzly, which already offers inline media display, is optimistic about the impact. "I think there is more upside in the exposure than not," he said.
Will people use it?
From the beginning, the 140-character format was loved for its simplicity. But Facebook's News Feed and nifty apps like Flipboard incorporate multimedia into an aesthetic, cohesive and arguably more usable stream of updates from your friends.
Judging from the setting Twitter briefly inserted, users will see photos and videos posted by people they're following, no choice about it. Twitter will hide media from people you aren't following by default, but you can opt-in to see that too.
Some users might say that the low character limit was what made Twitter fun - but Twitter seems to be betting that 140 characters just isn't enough anymore.
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As far as the development community goes, I don't think that it would be too bad if they implemented the multimedia as an annotation.
I think this is the moment we've all been waiting for. In-line photo & video display is one of the things that makes Facebook easier for newbies to understand (god knows, it's not the FB interface) and embrace.
But Twitter is already sooooooo slooooowwww most of the time, I have to wonder if they'll be ready for this anytime soon. It seems like building the feature sets is the easy part. Keeping it running at an acceptable speed eludes Twitter even when it's just text.
@CarriBugbee
Though Twitter has avoided feature bloat, you know this must be an ongoing debate in the company... to enhance the service to be more aligned against Facebook and typical social networks. Obvious reason for not seeing more features and enhanced profiles has mainly been the need to focus on scalability and uptime. But it needs to be addressed because their is no logic in not providing the fundamental features that social users expect. 140 characters w/ links is not enough. Annotations are great and needed but again, not enough unless Twitter themselves leverage them with their own media hosting.
Personally, I would rather host media with Twitter directly than rely on the various 3rd party services that end up being baked into twitter clients. Especially when the media is coming from my mobile device. I want to understand the contract between me the user and Twitter, once. I dont want to have to think about my files being scattered around and fragmented by different services that I use as I try different software or rely on convenience of the service name that I remember exists on any given day. And it's ridiculous that Twitter, as large and successful as they are not, does not let me upload at least a meg for an image or small clip. They already use Amazon s3 for profile pics so at least latch onto that cloud hosting in the interim.
I think users would be happy if their Twitter profile page was improved and Twitter could allow for media uploads here and have albums/galleries where each file could be included in a new tweet. Nothing new. But it would be a big deal. A huge deal in fact. People would take a good look at Twitter and if they use Facebook and dont love it over there, they may end up spending more time using Twitter.... and the shift might begin. The next migration (MySpace ->Facebook->Twitter->Google?).
SMS and the original quaint 140 char limit will always have a place. But lets face it, it comes down to UI. Want to send an SMS compatible message using Twitter? Then toggle on SMS mode and the 140 character limit/counter will be turned on so you dont go over. Or alternatively, let user opt to send the first 130-140 chars with link (annotation?) to full message on web. Point is, their are ways to provide the necessary flexibility to accomodate all user needs. So lets not fool ourselves about the charm of 140 characters anymore. It's over. Support SMS. Support longer messages (512chars?). Support media uploads. Evolve. Survive.
Twitter knows this. Even if they tend to focus on speaking highly of the simple micro-message as being all they need moving forward. Maybe it is their utility value that is enough. But I dont see it as logical to ignore the facts of the Social Web and its standard requirements to keep users happy.
@sull
Finally some good writing from RWW! Just kidding but congrats on your new position.
If they host the content and it's reliable (big if) then a number of third party apps will wither away.
I appreciate the types of third party apps that get developed will change in the years to come but the developer community is getting weary. Not sure that will negatively affect Twitter but it could.
Marshall, do you happen to have a time stamp for when that feature went live briefly? ;-)
I just posted a pic of the Hawthorne Bridge and verified that it shows up in the Twitter Android app. But it is posted on Twitpic, so Twitter didn't need to host it.
On the Android, the Seesmic client is also showing it, although it took a while to get fetched from Twitpic. It doesn't show up in the mobile.twitter.com on the Android browser.
I'm about to post a video - a YouTube link, anyhow ... we'll see what happens. ;-)
Thanks for the thoughtful comments, all.
@sull -- Chilling words, "So lets not fool ourselves about the charm of 140 characters anymore. It's over... Support media uploads. Evolve. Survive" and a good point about centralizing functionality.
Matt -- Thanks for the kind words!
Ed -- I believe it was around 5 pm PST that users noticed the new language. However, there's no indication that photos or videos ever appeared inline for any users.
Hopefully Twitter will make an announcement about this soon and clear up some of the speculation.
@citadrianne
I can't imagine Twitter hosting picture or other media anytime soon, their server capacity is already sorely taxed. Putting external media links in the new Annotation payload seems like a good plan. Flipboard and other Twitter client presentations would be enriched by such author-defined media.
I think that it's good, because you don't need to open link of picture to see ttat it's shit. You can see it from picture preview(if it will be like in Twitter app for Android where you can see small thumbail)
Twitter's service is really cool and is now popular here in our country. The sad thing is that it's not fun to use because they don't have sms support compared to other countries. Many Filipinos use their service but then the masses don't enjoy it. Now that there's a chance of adding multimedia experience will they consider adding philippines to have sms support?
Nothing new...3rd party app - Power Twitter already does this.
This will be a great feature if Twitter can keep up with the capacity and roll it out in the correct fashion. @jgwentworth
As digital assets are very important for future marketing this can be good idea.
I think this would be exciting. Twitter is getting closer to feeling like tumblr.com, which I love, but still remaining simple enough.
My wish for twitter tho: that they add something to the profile pages, or add the capibility for users to have a fave 5. Or a top 8 or something. Lists just aren't enough. I feel like when people go to my page they rarely if ever check out my lists. I want a way to connect people with my friends, and my favorite people I follow. Something more built in than lists, something you could text to 40404, like top5, and it would return a users fav 5, so you could follow them too, and everybody would have and use it, and people would be used to it. That's my wish.
It would make people feel more connected. #ff isn't enough, but I do like it.