Twitter and Snapchat are Going Head to Head

Snapchat and Twitter are on the opposite sides of the social media spectrum. As many of us know, Snapchat is more photo and video oriented, with dog filters and dancing hot dogs galore. Twitter leans more towards text heavy posts (granted your message is under 280 characters) with the occasional GIF here and there. Now, Twitter is rumored to be planning on bridging the gap by creating a Snapchat-style feature.

Twitter Inc. is supposedly working on a Snapchat-style tool that will make it easier for users to post videos on its app, according to a report by Bloomberg on Thursday. The feature is supposed to encourage users to share more videos by reducing the amount of steps it takes to post video content.

At this time, the design has not been finalized, and there is no timeline set for its debut. Twitter has yet to make a comment on this new feature.

Twitter is not the first company to become inspired by Snapchat’s story feature, which allows users to post videos before it disappears forever after 24 hours. The social media powerhouse Facebook Inc. released an identical feature on both its Messenger and Instagram apps a couple years ago.

For Facebook, the copycat feature was a success, at least on Instagram. Instagram stories has over 150 million daily users worldwide. Facebook on the other hand… some consider Facebook stories to be a “total failure.”

As far as Twitter goes, the company has been struggling with a stagnant user base for months, and its stock has been collapsing. At this point, it is hard to tell whether or not this move can revive Twitter’s user base. However, shares of Snapchat parent Snap fell more than 5% on Thursday, and Twitter shares gained about 1.4%. Is this just a coincidence, or could there be some truth behind the rumor?