Twitter Adding Video Sharing, Group Messaging Features
By social media editor Melony Roy
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (CBS) -- In the face of new social media competitors such as WhatsApp and Snapchat, venerable Twitter is rolling out two new features.
Annie Heckenberger, an advertising expert and "community trailblazer" with Philadelphia-based advertising agency Red Tettemer, says Twitter has been historically slow in rolling out new features, but the social networking company is now releasing two major updates to its platform: group direct messages, and native video-sharing and editing.
"The reasons behind these two features is most likely because they were seeing other, newer apps surpass them -- like Instagram -- so Twitter really needed to go back to the drawing board to figure out how to make their product a little more sticky," she says.
And Heckenberger says the new video feature is the most appealing to advertisers.
"It plays within the tweet," she explains, "so I don't have to link out and send somebody to Youtube or Facebook or another platform. And thirty seconds is a sweet spot to tell a story with video."
Twitter says the features are rolling out to all users over the next few weeks.