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Twitter to Add Video Tweeting?

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If Twitter added the ability to post video clips to the service, would you use it? That feature may be coming, according to a short and unsourced article today by Britain’s Telegraph. If true, such a service would compete with many existing Twitter video sites, including Twiddeo and Vidly.

The details, however, are suspiciously sparse, with the Telegraph merely citing discussions by the site’s founders:

The upgrade, which is being discussed by Twitter’s (Twitter) founders, will enable Twitter users to upload brief video snippets to their profiles directly from mobile phones, laptops and other devices.

Third party sites Twiddeo and Tweetube already allow Twitter users to post video tweets but only by creating links to their sites.

Both Twideo and Tweetube have so far failed to gain as much popularity as similar external service Twitpic (Twitpic). Twitter’s founders hope by adding live video-tweeting it will help boost its prominence as a fashionable social-networking tool again.

We’re somewhat dubious about this one: there’s been no public discussion of video Tweeting, while upcoming features like the new retweets and lists have been discussed extensively. We’ll let you know when we hear back from Twitter on the matter.

Would you use video Tweets if they were a native Twitter feature? Let us know in the comments.

We’re Not Doing Video Tweets

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We commented a few hours ago on a claim in the Telegraph newspaper that Twitter is considering the addition of video to the service, and expressed skepticism about the report. That skepticism seems well-founded, as Twitter co-founder Biz Stone replied to our inquiries today by email, essentially debunking the article’s premise:

Haven’t read the piece but no video hosting. 140 characters of text including spaces. You know the drill!

Twitter’s (Twitter) position is sound: if the site were to duplicate the functionality of existing apps, it could undermine the trust of developers who invest huge amounts of time, money and energy in creating applications for the Twitter ecosystem.

That said, Twitter does lose out when it comes to multimedia: adding in-line thumbnails for images and videos (even if that content is hosted on 3rd party sites) would make for a much richer experience that could match Facebook’s (Facebook) news feed for image and video sharing. Yes, in-line multimedia can be done with apps like TweetDeck (TweetDeck), but that’s non-obvious and an extra step for those more familiar with the leading social network. Even this could bring Twitter into conflict with developers however: if multimedia support were added, would there be default services in the same way Bit.ly is the default URL shortener?

Such moves would be made with caution, if at all. Stone’s comment sums up Twitter’s philosophy nicely: keep it simple, with as few extra features as possible.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto (iStockphoto), Fotoie

Twitter’s First Séance to Talk Dead Celebrities

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Add this to the list of extraordinary (in every sense of the word) uses of Twitter. A psychic in the UK plans to conduct what The Sun is calling “the world’s first online séance” using the microblogging service. The name? You guessed it: Tweance.

The Tweance will take place on October 30th (to mark Halloween), and users are being asked to tweet their nominations for the four celebrities that they would like the psychic – Jaynce Wallace – to contact. She will then post the “Q&A” to Twitter (Twitter).

I’m not going to comment on Wallace’s supposed clairvoyance, but it does seem worth noting that there seems to be a promotional tie-in, as the Tweance Twitter account is promoting a store in the UK that sells Halloween costumes. Are there enough people wanting to talk to Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, or the late Michael Jackson to make it at least marginally successful? Probably so.

Meanwhile, which dead celebs do you want to hear from in 140 characters or less? Share your nominations in the comments.

Twoogle Combines Both Google and Twitter Search Results

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Personally, I don’t think search engine are so useful anymore. Nowadays we have Twitter as most of Internet users are concerned with breaking news and everyone is using the micro-blogging service to tell the world what has happened. I’m not saying that Google is not useful anymore, all I’m saying is that the search engine was more useful a couple of years ago. However, we need both of them. How about searching something and seeing the search results of both Google and Twitter? Well, here is Twoogle.

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