Twitter on Thursday announced new features to help users watch and discover videos on the social network. Most notably, the company will offer scrollable video feeds like TikTok.
The new scrollable video feed will be available soon for iOS users by clicking on a video. If you click on a video and finish watching it, you can scroll up to browse more video content. The next step is to scroll through a feed of videos, similar to TikTok’s. Click the back arrow in the top left corner to exit the viewer and return to the original tweet.
Users will be able to discover engaging videos easier with Twitter’s new immersive media viewer. It has not yet been announced when Android users will be able to use the immersive media viewer.
Moreover, Twitter is launching a new video carousel on its Explore page. There will be a new category of videos called “Videos for you” that displays popular and trending videos that the app thinks you may be interested in.
In December 2021, Twitter started testing a TikTok-like video feed to give users more control over their Explore page. As part of this test, Twitter turned the entire Explore page into a video feed, complete with a “For You” tab. Twitter doesn’t plan to replace the entire Explore page with a TikTok-like feed with the changes announced today.
The company’s TikTok-like feeds are somewhat tolerable, especially since they aren’t being forced on users as the previous TikTok-like test was. Users who prefer scrollable video feeds can access the immersive view if they wish, and users who don’t want a video feed can elect not to open it.
It’s true that not everyone likes change, especially when it’s a copycat feature from another platform. Instagram understood this the hard way after facing immense backlash from users a few months ago when it introduced its TikTok-like full-screen home feed. Twitter may want to avoid a similar situation, which is why it’s opting to offer a more controllable experience when it comes to scrollable video feeds.
