Twitter's new camera feature is a bid to be more like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat

• Twitter is beta-testing its new in-app camera feature that lets users tweet pictures and stream live videos directly from the platform.
• While the new feature is become it’s hard not to notice that it’s coming in long after Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat have already been in the space.
• This is the second step that Twitter has taken towards video this year after announcing a new publisher tool around video content.

Twitter is currently beta-testing its new in-app camera through a public beta app called Twttr. Users can click pictures or even stream live video of up to 280 seconds and share the content in a tweet.

But Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat have all been ahead of the curve on this one. Not only do they already support in-app camera support but they also have the ‘Stories’ option where users can put a 24-hour deadline on their post.

Twitter, on the other hand, is only starting out.

Before 2012, prior to Facebook buying out Instagram, users could share pictures clicked on the photo blogging platform directly on to Twitter. But after the acquisition — and Twitter not letting Instagram users find friends via their friends list on Twitter — Instagram disabled its photo integration.

Point being, that Twitter isn’t bringing anything new to the table. But, it does let Twitter users do more on the platform itself. One quirky tweak that they’ve included is that if users are posting vida in the in-app camera, then they can change the color of their tweet.

Twitter has never been shy about the fact that photo and video content is where it’s headed in the future. Even on the publishing side of things, the company launched a new tool for Twitter Studios where publishers can use Twitter’s data to figure out when it’s the best time to post their videos. Twitter even lets brand schedule their video content so that they don’t miss out on an optimal time slot.

Even though the in-app camera functionality is only available via Twttr right now, hopefully users won’t have to wait long for the actual launch. According to reports, the feature will start rolling out on the official Twitter app on iOS and Android in the coming week.

See also:
Twitter will now let you swipe straight into the camera

Twitter takes a 'video-first' approach with its new publisher tool — but it’s fairly limited