Social media platforms have long been enabling too many features that will be useful to its users. One of the said features is the view count for videos, or the display wherein users will be able to see just how many had viewed the clip.
It was implemented on Facebook and Instagram too long ago, and the last to incorporate it to its site is microblogging site Twitter. It recently announced that it would be displaying the number of views for videos.
Facebook computes for its views by noting if a person watches a video for a minimum of 3 seconds with at least half of the clip on the screen. For Instagram, it also goes with Facebook’s 3 second-rule, but for Stories, a view will be counted once it is opened. Snapchat videos’ views will be counted once it is opened.
Twitter Video View Count Rules
Twitter’s rules fall within the mentioned platforms. It accounts one view for every 2 seconds of viewing a video. It was announced by Twitter through a tweet showing a video of a cat. This news comes after several users months ago noticed that there was a display of view count in their tweets, though the display would eventually disappear.
With this, there are many advantages for users and marketers who utilize the app for many reasons. Twitter has made many changes on the site, which mostly benefitted the users. For this newly introduced feature, users will be able to get an idea of how many have been taking the time to look into their contents.
Users can have an idea on which kind of video gets the most number of views, and therefore they can adjust on which video they would post next. With this, it could pose as an ice breaker and conversation starters for those who follow you but you really are not close with. For example, you share a video from “Game of Thrones,” you will see how many views your video will get. Some of those who have viewed it might engage with you as you share the same interests.
Know How Many Views A Video Gets On Twitter
Knowing how many views a video gets will also encourage more users to share visuals or even to join Twitter. Let us admit it, we love seeing the number of likes our posts get, so it might be the same for Twitter videos. It might encourage users to post more videos, or for those who do not have an account, to sign up for one.
Advertisers and marketers would probably take delight with this announcement. With this feature, businesses could easily track if their ads are getting enough views or if these are being watched. This is important because marketers could base their social media strategy to the number of views.
How? The display would become useful and essential for marketers as they could change their campaign to a more audience-friendly approach once they got a wind that their ads are not being watched. This could stem from a lot of factors like it lacks attention-grabbing start.
With this said, it will be vital for businesses who have been using Twitter to target their ideal audience. It would be easier for them to gauge their strategy. It could also help them analyze their audience by noting how they react with different videos.
According to Twitter, they have done this move in order to “surface” the best contents in their platform. This had become the trend nowadays. Many other platforms have started to prioritize quality contents, an example of which is Instagram. Like Twitter, the photo-sharing app tries to encourage its users to produce quality and relevant content that would generate a lot of engagement by putting the most interacted content on top of feeds.
A Breakthrough For Twitter Videos
For those who use Twitter as an avenue for a breakthrough, which means budding artists and crafters, it will be easier to know just how to approach the audience. They could also monitor how many have been viewing their video and know how many spend their time noticing their contents.
The downside is that Twitter accounts a view for a video if watched for 2 seconds. Even though the time range falls within with the other platforms, it is somewhat not entirely indicative of the preference of users. Two seconds could mean that they accidentally clicked the video or it just automatically played upon scrolling the feed, so the display of the number of view of the video could be an insight that needs to be looked at.
Some of the changes Twitter has made are the thread and the doubling of the character limit. The microblogging site was known for offering the limit of 140 characters per tweet. The tricks and challenges for the users are to fit everything they needed to say in 140 characters. As such, many have resorted to abbreviating words, even those that should not be shortened. As a result, many tweets had become unreadable and incomprehensible.
A Breakthrough Solution for Video Twitter?
The solution provided by the users themselves is to just share their thoughts in two to three succeeding tweets. Twitter answered this recently by making the character limit to 280, providing more freedom for users to say what they want to say in detail. Alas, Twitter’s move was apt and timely.
It noted that there are those who have used more than 140 characters in their tweets rather than those that stuck with the original number of characters. This means that many are more inclined to sharing and composing longer texts and messages rather than shorter ones. With this, it was followed with the introduction of the thread.
The thread is basically the infamous tweetstorm. The idea is not new, as it had been done by many users to share their funny experiences. What they did was they tweet several times and put numbers before or after each tweet to denote that another one is coming up and for chronology purposes. It was tedious and hence, time-consuming, so the introduction of threads just made the lives of users easier.