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Twitter adds new video and group chat features

Twitter adds new video and group chat features
Jonathan Riggall

Jonathan Riggall

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Last year Twitter announced that new features would be coming to the service, and it made good on that promise today, bringing new group chat and video functions to its service.

The new video feature means you can capture and edit, and share video from within the app. Twitter videos are non-looping, unlike six second Vines, and can last up to 30 seconds. Twitter owns Vine, but claims the new video feature is designed to sit alongside that app, not replace it. This feature is rolling out today, according to Twitter, and you should be able to use it soon. iOS users will be able to add video from their camera roll right away, whereas Android users will have to wait for a further update to do the same.

Group Chats are also coming to Direct Messages (DMs). Twitter’s direct message feature has felt underused for a long time, but the company finally looks to be making it more like a competitor to traditional messaging apps like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. Now you can create group chats within DMs, so you can have private conversations within Twitter. Group members do not have to follow each other, and you receive a notification if you are added to a group.

These new features come hot on the heels of ‘While you were away‘, which was added to give users highlights of what had happened on Twitter since the last time they checked.

Like most online services, new features and changes often provoke a lot of complaints. ‘While you were away’ was criticized for getting in the way of people’s normal feeds. Twitter would obviously like people to discuss tweets and topics within its service, as much as possible, but group chats could make it feel cluttered, as anyone who has been in a few WhatsApp groups will testify.

Source: Twitter

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Jonathan Riggall

Jonathan Riggall

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