Twitter is shoving more video in your timeline
Twitter wants you to watch — not just read — your timeline.
Twitter has created a "top videos for you" section that shows videos that it believes the user may enjoy. The videos play automatically, without sound, as you hover over them. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed it is a test.
It's not unlike Twitter's "While you were away" feature that displays tweets you may have missed while not using its app. That feature, introduced in earlier 2015, differed from Twitter's overhaul of the timeline in February 2016 in that this bulk of tweets is placed within the timeline instead of being surfaced at the top. The new test limits that section to videos.
The change is a far cry from Twitter's origins in a chronological feed limited to 140-character, text-only tweets. The move pushes the platform in a direction that makes the app more personalized and visual — and intriguingly more like Facebook.
Facebook also was once a text-based feed that has since heavily prioritized videos. Facebook executives have said the future of the app may be all video. Facebook's feed is purely algorithmic, while Twitter still maintains a mix of chronological and out-of-order sections like this test.
Screenshots below show what the test looks like:
In a strange twist of irony, King Bach (one of the accounts shown above) was one of Twitter's most popular creators of Vine, the now-defunct app. Part of the reason that app apparently failed was Twitter's emphasis on its own video product.
"In the early days, the Twitter Media team were all out pitching Vine as part of their job. And then all the sudden Twitter video launched and all of their goals shifted towards adoption of Twitter video," said a former Twitter employee who worked closely with Vine.
The videos are not just pulled from accounts you follow, however. Another test showed a video from @SenateDems, which I did not follow — until after being shown the video:
Despite Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and the team's emphasis on live content and news, the videos surfaced aren't live, at least in this current test. The screenshot above does include a video for Twitter's livestreaming app Periscope, but it is a replay of a video shared three hours prior.
But, an algorithmic feed has apparently been helping. While Twitter's latest report showed only a small gain in users, its user base is apparently becoming more active on the app.
Twitter's daily active users increased 11 percent year over year over the last year, compared to 7 percent over the last quarter. Tweet impressions received double-digit growth in engagement over the year.
“We achieved one of the hardest things to do for a consumer service at scale: we reversed and reaccelerated our usage,” Dorsey told investors on the call.
While Twitter is experimenting with surfacing older tweets in a user's timeline, a similar functionality may change in its ad product. Twitter is reconsidering promoted tweets since users are "natural to skip" them, TechCrunch reported Monday. Though, Twitter users are natural to skip anything.
This post was updated with more insight from Twitter.
Topics X/Twitter
Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.
