19th May 2012
Twitter Tweets About Plans To Add Films To Texts
22nd September 2010
Twitter, the phenomenally successful global micro-blogging
social network, is to become more film and video-friendly to make
the platform more appealing to advertisers.
It reaches an estimated 160 million users and receives 90 million
constantly updated 'tweets' (Twitter messages) daily. Yet,
Twitter's founders have found it difficult to monetise the service
because it hasn't attracted advertisers.
When users click on a video link within the efficiently short
140-character Twitter messages, they are forced to navigate out of
Twitter to another website.
And if they are away from Twitter, advertisers have no incentive
to sell their brands there.
Its owners recently announced that Twitter will soon feature a
second window. This will accept embedded streamed videos, films and
other content that users can access while simultaneously receiving
and sending Tweets, without moving out of the website.
The company hopes this will encourage visitors to stay longer on
Twitter and hence lure advertisers to the platform.
Advertising revenue is considered vital to Twitter's future,
especially if the privately owned company wants to go public on the
stock exchange.
Launched in 2006, the San Francisco-based Twitter currently
generates revenues from sharing its data with other
information-hungry web services, including Google.
It will need the permission of rights owners to feature their
videos, films and photographs within its own site. Consequently, it
has started signing licensing deals with video and photography
websites like YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr.
Photography by Ekin Erinc