Twitter wants to make it easier for people to post videos to its app, and it’s reportedly planning to take some inspiration from Snapchat in order to do so.
According to a new report, citing sources familiar with the matter, Twitter is currently working on a tool that will let users more easily utilize their camera to take and share video clips, showing what is happening around them.
While Twitter already lets you share videos and photos, this is not an intuitive feature: requiring multiple taps to open up the camera and tweet out a finished message. Snaptchat’s app, by comparison, is built around the camera, which is the first thing that users see when they open it. From here, they can then swipe through to view photo and video messages from friends or other media content.
In the past, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has praised Snapchat, calling it “very modern,” while acknowledging that Twitter can be “confusing.” (We presume it won’t copy Snapchat’s self-destructing videos, though!)
With stagnant growth, Twitter has been focused on new ways to attract users. Last year, it rolled out a redesign that unified the user experience across Android and iOS, and made it prettier and easier to navigate.
Ironically, despite stumbling upon a format that is being copied by everyone from YouTube to Instagram, Snapchat has gone through its own usability crisis. Last year, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel revealed that Snapchat’s app will be undergoing a major redesign, after the company fell short of expected growth projections for the quarter.
In a letter to investors, Spiegel blamed the difficulties on the service being too difficult for many users to understand. “One thing we have heard over the years is that Snapchat is difficult to understand or hard to use,” he wrote — adding that, “Our team has been working on responding to this feedback.”
Source: Bloomberg
