Twitvid Redesign Features Main Feed, Easier Streams
Last month, Twitvid – an unofficial video client for Twitter – launched a redesign to integrate their videos, as well as videos from YouTube and Vimeo, directly into one feed. This was part of the company’s effort to transform from a video-sharing tool into more of a social network.
“On YouTube, you have to know what you’re looking for,” Mo Adham, CEO of Twitvid, told Rolling Stone. “You search for a specific thing, and then go through a bunch of questionable videos to find the right clip. Twitvid surfaces all of the best content specifically for you.”
Artists like Snoop Dogg and Mariah Carey already use Twitvid to share short, personal video updates and on-the-road messages, but the San Francisco company is aiming to become more of an entertainment destination like VEVO. Recently, Shakira shared a quick video of her lighting off sparklers with a bunch of kids on New Year’s Eve, Justin Bieber released a new song featuring Jaden Smith.
“On Twitvid, you can find everything from a funny clip of an artist backstage [to] their million-dollar music video,” said Adham, 24.
The company is working with artists to get more exclusive content. Most recently, a Twitvid user unofficially released Beyoncé‘s music video for “Party” and R. Kelly‘s comeback single, “Radio Message.”
Adham explained that artists use Twitvid over YouTube and VEVO as a more direct way of being able to reach fans. “Fans don’t have to remember to go watch a new Bieber music video or find that Colbert clip, because those automatically get pushed to your fan Twitvid streams,” he said.
In a similar move towards being more open, YouTube also went through a recent redesign to bring in Facebook integration. However, Twitvid does not aim to compete with the Google video-sharing giant.
“We don’t care if your content lives on YouTube, or Twitvid, or whatever site,” Adham said. “We just want to let you share it in one place.”
Although fans can already get a stream of all their YouTube subscriptions, the Google service is a closed system and does not support Vimeo or other video platforms. Another element of the Twitvid redesign is the creation of categories, or channels, to discover content around a specific topic like jazz videos from the 1960’s or “eclectic music” like Mumford & Sons, Janelle Monáe and Kanye West.
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