For those who need to huddle out of earshot, call a virtual group meeting or plan a presentation with a team in private, Twitter now offers all those opportunities thanks to direct messaging that supports groups of up to 20 users.
Along with the addition of direct group messaging, Twitter now also supports video capturing and editing.
Group conversation leaders can setup private forums with any followers and those invited to the discussion don't have to be following one another. Just as is the case in one-on-one messaging, group forums can facilitate the exchange of text and tweets and videos and emojis.
"Whatever the [use] case may be, the ability to converse privately with groups gives you more options for how and with whom you communicate on Twitter," says Twitter Product Manager Jinen Kamdar.
The second new Twitter app feature, the video capture, posting and editing capability, is possible thanks to a camera button.
"In just a few taps you can add a video to unfolding conversations, share your perspective of a live event, and show your everyday moments instantly, without ever having to leave the app," says Kamdar.
Users simply hold down the camera button to record and release it to end recording. The Twitter app will break up the videos into 30-second clips.
After recording, users can weed out the bad clips and sort the good ones using the app's inline editor. From there, users are just one tap away from sharing clips or compilations of shots to feeds or in private messages.
The introduction of the new video and private messaging features are strategic steps in Twitter's efforts to leverage the roughly 500 million "logged out" users that visit its site each month. Those "logged out" users are visitors who come for celebrity profiles but don't stay and log in with the same frequency.
"Prior to now, our strategy only allowed us to focus on that audience of 284 million users, and not the audience of 500 million users that already exist on our platform," stated Anthony Noto, Twitter's chief financial officer, in a November 2014 discussion of Twitter's focus in 2015.
