14 DAY TRIAL // There are big changes coming for Twitter in the next year or so, the company promised, as it seeks to keep investors put and to get people to keep using the platform.
During the company’s analyst call, the company shared plans to make some big changes to the timeline, which should help increase user interactions and recommendations on the network.
The company’s Kevin Weil, VP of product, explains that they’ve already taken some steps to make Tweets richer and more engaging, giving users more ways to interact, beyond text. For instance, there are videos, Vines and GIFs now, while the site has gotten the capability to post multiple posts, tag people in photos and use emojis.
To help showcase everything, they launched a new profile design and introduced new ways for partners to share premium video and audio on Twitter.
“But aside from just watching video more easily on Twitter, you should be able to record, edit and share your own videos natively on Twitter too. Alongside short looping Vine videos, we think you’ll have fun sharing what’s happening in your world through native video. You can expect to see this in the first half of next year,” Weil reveals, which makes for some pretty interesting additions.
New Timelines
The company handles some 500 million Tweets every day, which means that you’re missing a whole deal of content since you can’t exactly follow everyone. For this purpose, the company is looking into new ways to surface relevant tweets so the content is always interesting and easy to discover.
Of course, Dick Costolo already confirmed plans for such timelines where people could track various topics they’re interested in, or in which they can see only the tweets on a specific topic from the people they follow.
“We’re experimenting with better ways to give you what you come to Twitter for: a snapshot of what’s happening. We can use information like who you follow and what you engage with to surface highlights of what you missed and show those to you as soon as you log back in or come back to the app,” writes Weil.
New things for Direct Messages
Twitter also plans to make some changes to the Direct Messages area. Several updates are on their way, which will make it easier to make a public conversation private. One of these changes will actually roll out next week, which is the ability to share and discuss tweets natively and privately via Direct Messages.
Over the coming months, Twitter will be picking up the pace of product changes and improvements. As always, that will involve a lot of experimentation, as well as feedback listening time.
