Seems like just yesterday that the Telegraph was reporting that Twitter was considering the introduction of video tweets into its playbook (actually it was just yesterday). Interesting and scary thought all at once (honestly, do you need to actually see some of the folks who pass along their nuggets of 140 character wisdom?). So while it makes for a nice article and creates the some speculation, what was actually given to the folks at Mashable was even more important. High atop Mt. Twitter the story was given ‘the biz’ by The Biz as an official thumbs down was offered to the rumor. Biz speaks, Mashable reports.
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!
Personally, I breathed a sigh of relief on this one. Twitter and the rest of the world hasn’t yet figured out the 140 text piece of it with search, revenue and any other business considerations you can come up with. At this point in time introducing something like a video offering might serve as more of a distraction than a value add.
Now having said that we should let you know that Mashable’s Pete Cashmore (great Internet marketing name btw) did offer his thoughts on the “what ifs?” and “woulda, shoulda, coulda’s” of video and Twitter with the following.
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 news feed for image and video sharing.
Aw, Pete, you had to bring up that pesky Facebook thing didn’t you 
? There will always be the opportunity for each service to be more like the other and it will keep us all busy in between the time we are logged in to Facebook and Twitter.
So would you like to see video and Twitter as one without the third party assist?
