Twitter + Rich Media = Fail

Twitter has debunked the rumours that they were about to add a video upload feature to the network.

This is fantastic news.

Twitter works because it’s text-based. It keeps things simple, but also encourages users to be creative with their updates and I think makes a lot of people think about the quality of their writing. It makes better editors out of all of us.

Twitter doesn’t need to emulate the features of other social networks like Facebook and MySpace. These guys are scared of what Twitter has started, and of what it might become. Twitter has nothing to be afraid of from Facebook. Quality over quantity.

If I want to share a video, I’ll add a link to my tweet. And if you don’t want to see it, don’t click on the link. That works, and it works really well.

If Twitter starts adding rich media features to the service, it’s toast. If I ever load up somebody’s profile and it starts playing some awful MP3 or loads up a video file automatically, I doubt I’d ever go back again. And if that became a core part of all of our timelines, I suspect a lot of people would move on.

And for good reason. Nobody wants another MySpace. Nobody.

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