Can Twitter Dominate Video In Social Media And Take On YouTube?

and

are about to become

in the world of search, but they are slowly becoming competitors for streaming user-generated video content. Twitter, like most social media companies, wants to draw and retain users with a host of new video opportunities. This plan started with brief Vine clips, but Twitter is gradually moving toward a more robust strategy that includes pre-recorded videos and live streams through Periscope. Dan Sahar, co-founder and VP of Product Marketing at

, told Benzinga that Twitter is "just dipping their toes into the water on video in general." "They do have a play that's similar to Facebook," said Sahar. "I think they'll do the auto-play, almost certainly." Sahar said that a platform like Twitter "works really well" for Periscope and Meerkat, which allow users to stream live video for others to watch online. Even so, he isn't convinced that these apps are the key to Twitter's future. "The tech press is writing about it constantly, but is it really big?" Sahar questioned. "It's big in San Francisco. Meerkat, how many users do they have? Half a million? It's not something that really moves the needle bandwidth-wise -- far from it. There are many, much larger live streaming platforms than that today. But it's created a lot of buzz for sure." Qwilt's recent video rankings revealed that

cracked the top 10.

and YouTube still dominated, but Twitter did not make the cut. "Will [Periscope/Meerkat] catch on? The past hasn't shown that to be the case," Sahar added. "You could argue that [it will catch on] because the technology is now a little more mature. But I'm not sure how many people want to broadcast themselves and get a ton of other people to watch it. At least from our bandwidth perspective, I doubt it's going to be a massive bandwidth impact for a long time."

Twitter doesn't need video to continue its growth spurt, however. Sean Udall, CIO of Quantum Trading Strategies and author of The TechStrat Report, is

for the search deal with Google. "The most comically idiotic thing is, what were people worried about [with] Twitter? MAUs," Udall told Benzinga. "The MAU number has kind of worked itself out on its own. Now they have the Google search deal." Udall is intrigued by the idea of Twitter and Google's MAUs will partially converge, which will create more traffic for Twitter. "Now you have Twitter integrating with Google's search algorithm," he said. "Google just made their search algorithm…they basically tweaked it to take advantage of the Twitter deal. There you go, home run!" Disclosure: