Twitter has announced an update for multimedia sharing that, along with another update, makes it easier to discover videos and essentially turns Twitter into a multimedia platform.
The announcement clearly and without ambiguity states that its goal is to become “the best place to share media information” and posts examples of the new features.
Starting today, any Twitter app users can upload up to four videos, images and/or GIFs within a single tweet.
This change ties in with another major update that adds a video carousel to the Explore feature.
The video carousel allows users to discover more videos to watch.
Twitter’s statement is clear that their goal is to transform their platform primarily from a text-based social media platform to a more multimedia platform.
According to this announcement:
“This update is the latest example of how we are working to make Twitter the easiest and most convenient place to share images, videos and other creative content.
It complements the release of two new video products — full-screen videos and a new video carousel in the Explore tab — that help people find and watch what’s happening on Twitter easier than ever.”
The focus of this update is to give creators an opportunity to express themselves, and the video carousel updates help users discover new videos.
Twitter explained:
“Mixing different types of visual content together in one Tweet allows creators to express themselves beyond 280 characters and gives them more ways to tell their story.”
Examples of the new format
Twitter has posted examples of new and creative ways to share media and tell a story.
This type of tweet gives you the ability to match an image and a video and play the video while maintaining side-by-side formatting. Uploading a side-by-side image and video gives you the opportunity to watch a video version of an event and visually compare it to a photo of the same event.
It’s an interesting and artistic way to show the media showing the same event from different perspectives, so to speak.
Big changes in Twitter
Twitter has made many changes to its platforms to encourage monetization for creators.
But none of these updates have caused significant changes to the platform itself.
These new updates are important because they profoundly change what Twitter is doing, moving from a largely text-based sharing platform to a multimedia social site.