Twitter adds new ways to capture video, send group messages

[SAN FRANCISCO] Twitter Inc released new ways to capture video on the microblogging service and to have private conversations between small groups, making progress on some long-awaited products.

Users will be able to select an option to shoot and edit a video as long as 30 seconds within the Twitter application, the company said on Tuesday in a blog post.

It's a tool that Twitter said will make the service easier to use during news events, like protests, and will build on the company's relationship with the users of Vine, its 6-second video application.

Twitter is also improving its direct messaging product to let private conversations take place between as many as 20 people in a group.

The company has been re-engineering parts of the product's infrastructure, after direct messaging became famous for being easy to misuse, with Twitter Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto in November mistakenly publicly tweeting about a plan to buy a company that he had meant to send privately.

The company has been accelerating the pace of its product rollouts after delays caused by a revolving door of executive changes.

Chief Executive Officer Dick Costolo is on his fifth head of product in five years, after promoting Kevin Weil to the position in October. Twitter reports quarterly earnings next week.

"The energy in the building over the last couple months and especially today is just palpable," Jinen Kamdar, product director for direct messages and video, said in an interview. "

We set an aggressive goal and we hit it."

BLOOMBERG