Curating Content: Twitter’s Media Preview
Over the past week we’ve seen Twitter roll out media previews onto it’s apps and also onto twitter.com.
Online commentators have been quick to jump on the bandwagon that this is purely a way for Twitter to add value for their advertisers, and many marketers will be rubbing their hands. While this may be the case, there is also another angle for why Twitter has made this move: to make Twitter a more engaging place for its users through content curation.
Content Curation
The phrase ‘content curation’ was a particular buzzword at the BBC Academy’s Social Media event at Media City last week and is a phrase used to describe how we manage, display and organise content – both as editors and users. We can now digest content faster in this visual form, as the new media preview now allows users to see more on their feed which will see users begin to cull any content that they don’t care for.
Twitter has made life easier for the user and is making their feed more interesting, although there is a danger of advertising overkill. From a commercial angle visual content gets seven times more interaction (retweets, favourites, clicks etc) which clearly shows that making the effort to create imagery be it a picture or video is time well spent.
The Change
Featured below are the changes as a result of this update.
- A tweet on your feed before Twitter introduced the media preview.
- A tweet on your feed after Twitter introduced the media preview.
- A tweet on your feed after Twitter having clicked ‘Expand’ – Twitter is already showing two thirds of the image in the media preview.
The Future
This update may eventually bring problems for Twitter. Facebook’s engagement in the UK this year decreased 10% with dissatisfied users pointing the finger at the overwhelming number of ads on their news feeds. Could the same thing happen for Twitter?
The media preview also reflects Google’s vision for a better, shareable web. The web is a visual medium and users better engage with visual content. Expect more visual content on your feed, more photo updates from your friends and a vast number of ads over the next couple months in the build up to Christmas. From a digital marketing perspective, this suggests that Twitter may well be lining up a retargeting platform that would talk to media preview sponsored posts.
There is however a way to turn off the media preview as our friends over at Mashable explain.
What do you make of these changes? Has it affected how you use Twitter? Let us know in the comments section below or ping us a Tweet – you can even send it as an image if you like.