Twitter Adds Video Capture To Its Mobile App

Twitter unveiled a few new features today, and one of its updates is a welcome addition for users who enjoy shooting video on their phones. The social media site has unveiled a video capture service available on its mobile app.

The new video capture feature, announced via Twitter’s official blog, lets users access their phone cameras with a single touch. From there, the app’s amateur videographers can snap pictures and shoot video, which they can then edit right in the app before uploading to Twitter. Actor Neil Patrick Harris is one of the first people to use the new service. The How I Met Your Mother star shot a quick video in which he gives his followers an update about the upcoming Academy Awards, which he will host.

Some critics may wonder why Twitter needs its own video capture capabilities, since it already owns Vine

. The popular app generates more than a billion loops each day for its parent company, but the new service gets around Vine’s six-second restriction by supporting videos up to 30 seconds long. That’s twice the maximum runtime of Instagram, which began offering videos shortly after the launch of Vine.

Twitter’s video plans have been in the works for a while. We first heard about it back in November 2014, when it was tentatively slated for a first-half 2015 release. In January, a report in Recode deemed the new video service “only a few weeks away.”

Beyond its video capture service, Twitter also announced a new group messaging feature. More information about both of these updates can be found on Twitter’s blog.