Twitter and Vine introduce support for much longer videos

While Twitter is primarily a text-based social network, more recently there has been an increased importance placed on images and videos. Just as tweets are limited to a certain number of characters, videos have -- until today -- been limited to 30 seconds in length. Now Twitter is embracing video in a big way, and today increases the maximum length to 140 seconds -- continuing the love affair with the number 140.

The company says that the number of video posted to Twitter has increased by 50 percent since the beginning of the year. This is an astonishing increase in just six months, and it makes the video-related changes all the more understandable. Vine users will also be able to take advantage of longer videos, but there's something of a catch.

While Twitter users on the web, Android and iOS will be able to upload video of up to 140 seconds long, things are a little different on Vine. As the Vine Team explains, the current limit of six second videos is not being increased, but it is now possible to use your six-second Vine as "a trailer that points directly to a mini-movie". The overall upper limit is the same 140 seconds as on Twitter, it's just handled in a slightly different way.

It's likely that the 'trailer' aspect of the update -- which is being introduced as a beta feature -- will create a degree of friction on Vine, but over on Twitter, full 140-second videos are available without the need for any extra click-throughs.

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