Twitter to roll out immersive media browser with vertical video scrolling

Microblogging platform Twitter has announced that it will soon introduce a designed video viewing experience. The newly redesigned experience will allow users to watch videos appearing in their tweets or feeds in full screen.

The new update will also allow Twitter users to scroll vertically from a dual-screen view to view more content on the platform. Twitter has also revamped its Explore tab, adding a video carousel feature along with tweets that users are interested in, which now appear in the “Videos With You” section.

The move comes as other social media apps like YouTube and Instagram have changed their strategy and adopted short video formats and a TikTok-like user interface for short films and reels. However, the microblogging site opted for video content-only UI elements.

While the video carousel feature is already available to both iOS and Android users, the immersive media browser will launch for iOS users using the English platform in the coming days. The announcement of the same was made through a blog post which also stated that the company aims to make Twitter the best place for video. The blog post also included an embedded tweet for Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds, announcing a trailer for his highly anticipated and upcoming film Deadpool 3. Twitter said that entertaining trailers will be an important part of the media viewing experience on the platform.

In November 2020, the company launched Fleets to expand the incorporation of video into its platform. However, it was pulled down after only eight months of its launch. Fleets attempted to implement a story-like feature first seen on Snapchat and later adopted by Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin. However, users called it slow due to technical glitches, after which it was pulled back.