Auto-playing video ads? People love auto-playing video ads – Twitter Twitter will automatically play videos, Vine vids, and animated GIFs. The San Francisco-headquartered post-profit upstart is concerned that you, a Twitter user, may be missing “something that you care about,” because of all the effort involved in lifting your finger to tap on a video to play it. Therefore, videos will now …
"The San Francisco-headquartered post-profit upstart is concerned that you, a Twitter user, may be missing “something that you care about,” because of all the effort involved in lifting your finger to tap on a video to play it."
The problem with the above statement is - I'm not a user. I used to really respect the 140 char message format for a pithy, witty statement. There have been some absolute classics in amongst the lunch menus etc.
Unfortunately for a company premised on being the SMS of the intertubes they can't charge for the medium in the way a telco can. How on earth a multi £loadsofdosh company could arise on the back of their product is a testament to the nuttiness of their investors.
Twitter will soon look and work like an unholy combination of Facebook, Linkedin and the rest and it's a race to the bottom. Shame really.
Yes. Twitter has a very good specific use for me. None of these 'features' have anything to add to that use.
I will soon have to move all parties interested in what I have to say (yes such exists! In a very specific work-related way) to Diaspora* or similar. In the end, this isn't really the sort of thing that needs to be profitable for a specific organisation to exist if you go distributed.
I don't let YouTube auto-play videos to me because I like controlling when/where I listen to said streaming content. It's content I *want* to see but need to make sure it's fully buffered before hitting play as the bandwidth on my Comcast Internet sucks shit. If I allow it to stream then it jitters & pops, pauses & stops, grinding along as if I were back on dial up. So I let it buffer, play it once it's all the way here, and get a better experience.
Your advertisements are *NOT* content I wish to see, ESPECIALLY not if it renders my browsing into an absolutely craptastic experience.
I've got a HOSTS file updated regularly to block ad servers, I run my browser in Paranoid Security Modes to deny most of the ad injection routines, and I block ads as a matter of security. Since *YOU* don't bother to vet your ad suppliers for security & not delivering malicious crap, *I* won't let them on my machine.
I'm not even a Twitter user, I'm _BLIND_ and I can see what a stupid fucking idea that is, and I'll now be determining what method you use to auto-play video to me when I visit someone else's feed. The moment I find it, I'm stripping your ability to force that particular crap down my pipe, and giving you The Finger.
We do NOT like auto-playing videos, we do NOT like ads, and combining the two is not merely shooting yourself in the foot, it's sticking your head in the microwave & nuking whatever was inside your skull that passed for brains.
They claim they can get paid if the ad video is in view for more than three seconds? I'm sure that will result in a lot more ad views, but they will be of far lower quality so their advertisers will not be willing to pay the same rates.
Pissing off their users will drive more people to Vine, Snapchat, and other alternatives, just like Facebook drove some people to Twitter a few years ago. There always a new cooler alternative social networking site waiting with open arms to embrace those who flee places trying too hard to "monetize" them.
It is starting to look like rather than Facebook's profitable stagnation, Twitter is facing a Myspace fate...
Twitter is starting to look like a molesting uncle, allowing 140 characters of service provided you accept videos to be automatically thrust down your bandwidth.
I wonder how long it will take for Twitter to decide that you don't get to turn off the auto-run feature because "their customers (ie advertisers) clamored for it".
In any case, I salute the start of Twitter's bold march into oblivion.
Can't wait for it to get there already.
Seeing as adverts or the digital toilet wall for the world to scribble on that will soon be blasting said adverts at them are things that do not fall into this category for me, I shall happily sit back and furrow my brow as the loud objections that will surely erupt from this change generate lots of news stories which will have the effect of even more people going to the site out of curiosity and thus generating even more ad views.
Agree with the post above though that sooner or later everyone will become fed up of the resulting ad soaked pile of miscellaneous mush and move on to whatever the next simple. clear and unprofitable service is that is pleasant and easy to use, as the next repeat of the cycle begins.
Maybe at some point the investors who value these companies in the billions will cotton on to the fact that once the brand has been established and the user base has been built up, this form of monetization will drive everyone away to whatever the next ad-free cool thing is?
"7x increase in completions of Promoted Videos”... "3 seconds or more."
In other words, it usually takes at least 3 seconds for people to notice there's an obnoxious video playing and make it stop. Advertisers may mostly be annoying scum, but I don't think they're quite as stupid as Twitter seems to think.
While I realise they probably won't see this, I'll just say this:
"Twitter, if you are so convinced people will love to see autoplayed videos and ads, are you going to ask on first launch whether your users want the videos and ads to autoplay?"
That, to me, would indicated they actually do think people want it. If they just offer an option to disable it, even if they blatantly advertise how to disable it, that is, to me, implying they don't think people will opt to watch the ads.
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