By Pascal Oparada (Social Media/Tech Reporter)
If all go according to plan, Twitter will roll out a snapchat-like camera feature that is accessible with a swipe from the home screen, which will allow users to share more stories in real time.
Twitter is already used by people to post pictures, videos, and live broadcasts, but as it builds up, it’s hoping to get people doing even more with the new feature.
Twitter is hoping the new snapchat-like camera could turn more people into citizens journalists, or get them sharing more selfies, reaction shots, and the world around them.
The new camera feature gives people the ability to swipe from the home screen to bring up a new unified capture screen.
After shooting some media, overlays appear prompting you to add a location and a caption to describe what is happening. Users can choose from six coloured backgrounds for the caption and location overlay card before posting. It lets unite words and imagery on Twitter for the first time to make a splash with your tweets.
Twitter’s spokesperson confirmed that the company is indeed developing the new camera feature, but did not give a timeline when it will be available.
I can confirm that we’re working on an easier way to share thing like images and videos on Twitter. What you’re seeing is in mid-development so it’s tough to comment on what things will look like in the final stage. The team is still actively working on what we’ll actually end up shipping.”
“Unfortunately we don’t have a timeline right now. You could expect the first half of this year,” the spokesperson said.
Twitter has largely sat by as visual sharing overtook the rest of the social media landscape. It’s yet to launch a Snapchat Stories feature like almost every other app — although you could argue that Moments was an effort to do that — and it seems to have neglected Periscope as the Live broadcasting trend waned. But the information density of all the words on Twitter might make it daunting to mainstream users compared to something easy and visual like Instagram