What if you could “video tweet” natively in your Twitter account instead of or in addition to the short text messages you currently send when you use Twitter?

According to a report in the Telegraph today, video will soon be coming to Twitter.

Twitter to introduce live video-tweeting

Twitter users may soon be posting real-time video tweets in addition to text tweets under plans to modernise the site.

The upgrade, which is being discussed by Twitter’s founders, will enable Twitter users to upload brief video snippets to their profiles directly from mobile phones, laptops and other devices.

Third party sites Twiddeo and Tweetube already allow Twitter users to post video tweets but only by creating links to their sites.

There are some interesting phrases in the Telegraph’s report that I’d love to know what they signify. For instance, I wonder what “real time video tweets” means. “Real time” implies “live,” doesn’t it? And what does “brief video snippets” mean? 12 seconds? 30? Longer?

No doubt some details will emerge soon enough.

My first thought on reading the Telegraph’s report wasn’t on Twiddeo or Tweetube, the two existing third-party video-tweet services mentioned, nor any other video commenting service that’s hooked into Twitter in some way.

Rather, it was seesmic, the video conversation service created by French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur which, I remember reading, was described as the video Twitter when the news first emerged in 2007 on what Le Meur was developing.

Seesmic.tv is still a vibrant community but the seesmic video focus clearly has shifted to seesmic desktop, its successful desktop app for managing your Twitter accounts (Facebook, too).

Where would seesmic video fit into this now, I wonder? Maybe its forthcoming iPhone app will give it legs again.

Meanwhile, look out for news on Twitter video. Maybe an appeal of this extension to Twitter will be its simplicity, just like Twitter itself: imagine that all you’ll do is record your video message and send; no linking to this or adding to that or connecting to something else.

Just record (or broadcast: remember the Telegraph’s “real-time video tweets” phrase) and tweet from whatever your preferred device is.

Simplicity is appealing and makes barriers to entry very low for the mainstream.

[Update Oct 12] Mashable reports that Twitter has no intention of developing a video service as part of the Twitter offering, quoting an email from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone:

Haven’t read the piece but no video hosting. 140 characters of text including spaces. You know the drill!

That seems pretty clear. I like the implied reinforcement of simplicity, ie, 140 characters of text, that’s it. So plenty of scope for third-party services like the ones I mentioned in the post, and others that may emerge.

Telegraph, where did your story come from?