3 game-changing features Twitter is working on right now

Twitter is getting some long-awaited updates.

The company’s VP of product, Kevin Weil, says native video shooting and editing, filters for surfacing relevant tweets, and updates to direct messaging are all in the pipeline. The announcement came in a blog post released today.

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Earlier this year Twitter enabled users to natively embed GIFs and other videos. Now the company says it wants users to be able to record, edit, and post videos within its app. Twitter is most used during live events, so in-app video producing capabilities definitely capitalizes on that use case. Adding video functionality would also push Twitter to compete more directly with Instagram’s video editing and sharing tools.

Twitter says it’s also working on creating tools that will make surfing the Twitter stream less of a chore. So far the company says it’s experimenting with creating “snapshots” for users that highlight some of the biggest news on the service. Already, Twitter surfaces trending tweets, but it doesn’t go much beyond that in terms of helping users make more sense of the stream.

The company is also developing ready-made timelines for users who don’t want to spend time developing personalized lists. This could allow people to get into Twitter immediately based on the selection of a few key interests, which might help with the service’s sometimes daunting onboarding process.

Finally, Twitter promises to update its direct messaging system and provide a way for users to move public tweets to private messages seamlessly. One of Twitter’s projects is to enable users to share and discuss tweets publicly and privately via direct messages. We’ll know more about that looks like when the feature rolls out next week.