Video messaging coming this week to Google Duo

Today on Twitter, Google announced that it will roll out a new feature to its video chat service Google Duo this week. The new feature is video messages.

Using video messages, you’ll be able to send brief videos to your contacts which they can open and view at their convenience. It’s not clear exactly how long a video message can be, but it appears to be only a few seconds.

It is also not yet clear if the video messages will eventually disappear, like a Snapchat message, or if it will be saved in your chat logs.

Google’s announcement tweet is below:

If you watch the GIF attached to the tweet, you’ll see that recording a video message is pretty simple. You just swipe up on the home screen and then hit the record button. A countdown timer will tell you how long you have left to finish your message.

When you’re done recording, you can instantly share the message with people from your contacts.

Although the GIF probably shouldn’t be taken as gospel right now, it does suggest that you can only send a video recording to one contact at a time. It’s not clear if you can send it to one person and then send it again to another, or if you’ll have to record a different message every time you want to send it to someone else.

Since the feature is rolling out this week, we’ll likely know the answers to these questions soon.

Google Duo is getting some decent support from Google for now, but with both Hangouts Classic and Google Allo scheduled for either termination or a complete overhaul, it’s a good bet that Google Duo’s lack of popularity will eventually lead to it sharing a similar fate. Regardless, this new feature seems fun!

NEXT: Google Duo seems to work on all Chromebooks now (if you ever use Duo)