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Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter, it’s been clear that he’s obsessed with metrics. In December of last year, he had Twitter add public “hit count” metrics to tweets. public “the score counts” were added to tweets in March.
But now, it looks like Twitter is dropping one of its most important metrics: video view count.
Multiple(opens in a new tab) Twitter(opens in a new tab) users(opens in a new tab)including the author(opens in a new tab) As of this article, you’ve noticed that videos on Twitter no longer show how many times they’ve been viewed. Previously, this metric was publicly available to all users.
The tweet may have been deleted
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The tweet may have been deleted
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It’s unclear if this move is intentional, as Twitter recently updated its video player to include playback speed and a picture-in-picture style mini player. However, some users reported that they noticed the view counts were missing more than a week ago.
As of now, video view counts have been removed from the Twitter for iOS app as well as the Twitter website. As of publication, video view counts may still(opens in a new tab) be seen on twitter for android.
If the removal of video view count metrics is really on purpose, this would make Twitter the least transparent social media platform when it comes to video. All other major video platforms, from YouTube to Facebook to TikTok, show their users how many views a video has received. It’s also an extremely important metric for advertisers as it helps them decide how to run ad campaigns on these platforms.
Removing this metric forces users to rely on a different one that often paints videos uploaded to Twitter as more successful than they really are.
As mentioned above, Twitter shows “tweet views”, but that’s just the number of impressions on a tweet. Since the Twitter algorithm regularly recommends tweets, users often receive content that they don’t necessarily have any interest in. accurately reflect how many users actually viewed the video.
a perfect example(opens in a new tab) One such discrepancy in these two tallies can be seen in the campaign of Republican presidential primary candidate Ron DeSantis. advertisement video. DeSantis’ campaign has around 15 million views on its ad video. But, that’s the tweet view count metric. Android users, who can still see the more accurate video view count, can see that the actual video only received a little over 4 million views. (It’s also important to note that Twitter counts a video view as just 2 seconds(opens in a new tab) of game time.)
The tweet may have been deleted
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Musk has focused video on the platform in recent months, as attempts to monetize Twitter through subscription-based services have fallen short. the company has been experimenting with bringing back its standalone live streaming app, Periscope. last week musk Announced that Twitter Blue subscribers can now upload videos up to 2 hours long.
Twitter’s new interest in being a video platform has attracted some media properties, particularly right-wing outlets. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson Announced would be launching a show on the platform. The Daily Wire also Announced(opens in a new tab) that he would also upload his long-form video podcasts, featuring conservative commentators like Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh, directly to Twitter.
How well Twitter’s pivot towards video is going, especially with the removal of video view counts, is anyone’s guess.
