Reuters
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Twitter was born in 2006 as a stream of SMS text messages. Before going public in 2013, it’s now revelling in images.
The company tweaked its design on Tuesday to favour image- and video-sharing by showing visual media directly within the Twitter timeline. Users previously had to click on a tweet to view the embedded multimedia.
Although the change does not affect the basic mechanics of how content is shared, it will likely alter the feel of Twitter, which long clung to its roots as an 140-character, text-based service invented in an era before smartphones existed.
As Twitter prepares to go public in a matter of weeks, the change will also present Twitter’s advertisers with more opportunities to get attention-grabbing ads in front of users - leading to more revenue for the company.
Twitter has long acknowledged that pictures and video are some of the most often shared content in social media.
The most re-circulated tweet in Twitter history, for instance, was a picture sent from President Obama’s account on Election Night in 2012. Three words - “Four more years” - captioned a photo of Barack and Michelle Obama embracing the moment the president declared victory.
“These rich Tweets can bring your followers closer to what’s happening, and make them feel like they are right there with you,” Michael Sippey, Twitter’s vice president of product, said in a short blog post on Tuesday.