Twitter Is About To Launch A YouTube-Like Video Platform, And The Details May Have Just Leaked

Princess Lauren/VineTwitter may not just have Vine stars anymore. It may have Twitter Video stars too.

Earlier, Twitter said it was working on a native video platform for 2015 that would allow users to upload and tweet original clips.

"Aside from just watching video more easily on Twitter, you should be able to record, edit and share your own videos natively on Twitter too," Twitter's VP of Product Kevin Weil wrote in November. "Alongside short looping Vine videos, we think you'll have fun sharing what's happening in your world through native video. You can expect to see this in the first half of next year.

Part of a website detailing the video product seems to be live. And from the FAQ page on the website, video.twitter.com, you can see what Twitter's potentially plotting for its YouTube-like service. TechCrunch's Ingrid Lunden exposed the live page thanks to a Twitter user Daniel Raffel who pointed her toward the website.

If this really is Twitter's video product, here's how it could work:

• The video platform will support mov and mp4 files.
• Users control what thumbnail of the video appears in tweets. Thumbnails must either be PNG or JPG files.
• There is no file-size limit on Twitter videos; Twitter is encouraging users to use the highest quality video possible.
• Videos can be up to 10 minutes long.
• Videos can be tweeted out, but the tweets can't be scheduled in advance. 
• No YouTube or outside videos will be allowed on the platform. All videos must be uploaded to the Twitter platform itself. Third-party advertisers are not allowed to run placements on the content either.
• Twitter will supply some video stats for publishers: the number of video starts, quartile completion rates (25%, 50%, 75%, 100%), and how those views were acquired (organic versus promoted). Outside analytics tools can't be used to measure the videos.
• Videos can be removed even after they've been tweeted.

Also up ahead for Twitter this year: Adding more location features in tweets (Foursquare and Twitter are partnering on this), adding better snapshots of what you missed on Twitter ("While you were away" feature), and better Direct Messaging tools (even Twitter executives sometimes have DM fails).

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the Twitter video website.