Will Twitter's new Engage app increase your audience?
Twitter used to be a quick and easy way to get messages and links direct to your mobile device. Now, with images, Vines, videos, and ads, our Twitter feeds are becoming increasingly cluttered.
Video is becoming central to the real-time conversations happening on Twitter, and more and more videos are appearing in our feeds. Twitter is taking advantage of all this with a new app and new features.
Twitter said video tweets have increased by over 50 percent since the beginning of 2016. And last week, it announced a standalone app, called Engage, which is intended to help popular creators interact with fans and grow and retain an audience.
Also, Twitter users can now post videos up to 140 seconds in length. Video uploads were previously limited to 30 seconds. Twitter announced that a "select group of Vine creators" will be able to post longer Vine videos as well.
Twitter's new Engage app gives creators an easy way to monitor engagement, and it delivers analytics on how their tweets are performing.
Other tools in Engage include curated recommendations (to help identify engagement opportunities) and a snapshot of influential mentions and follows. The app is only available to download from the Apple App Store in the US.
Meanwhile, users can upload longer videos to Twitter, and they might begin seeing longer Vine videos in their Twitter feed. The new video feature will "soon" be available for Mac and Windows, according to Twitter.
Engage certainly makes a lot of sense for Twitter.
Celebrities and high-profile users -- who are also known as top influencers -- have many followers and can easily become overwhelmed with the large amount of interactions they receive.
Every time a top influencer tweets, they receive a stream of notifications, which can make it really hard to track followers and fans who interact.
Twitter is obviously trying to become easier to use -- especially for its top influencers, who can now use Engage to promote themselves further.
Twitter has introduced a new browsing feature, too. By tapping on a video tweet or Vine in the Twitter timeline, users can see a full-screen interface with suggested video and Vine tweets below.
Jack Dorsey, Twitter's CEO and co-founder, said: "We're investing heavily in videos and creators. We want to be the best place for creators and influencers to build an audience and make it easier for creators to make money on Twitter, and soon Vine."
Hannah Donovan, Vine's general manager, added: "Creators are the heart of our entertainment community. They make us laugh, they inspire us and most importantly, they create culture. That is special."
Twitter wants to protect its top influencers from becoming overloaded with too much information, yet it does not want to isolate them from their followers and fans.
Will this latest innovation work for Twitter as it battles with Facebook Live for its real-time video audience?
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