Twitter is today revamping the way photos posted to its service will look, with a greater focus on a more media-heavy experience that now features uncropped photos and improved multi-photo displays. The update, arguably a minor tweak in the grand scheme of things, is aimed at helping Twitter continue its transition from the text-based service it has been in the past to one that better supports rich media.
It follows Twitter’s other recent moves to better highlight the media on its service, including the launch of visual media-focused “Moments” and autoplaying videos.
One of the issues with posting photos on Twitter previously, was that the images would be cropped in order to present a more uniform user interface and experience. While this may have kept things streamlined, and may have encouraged more users to click on tweets in order to expand the photo in question, it was also an annoyance as you couldn’t see the photo the way it was meant to be viewed.
For less technical users or those who didn’t have the time to edit their images so they would appear correctly in Twitter’s truncated view, it meant their photo wouldn’t be presented properly.
Twitter has now addressed this issue by posting the photos in the same size as they were when you originally snapped them – for the most part. (We understand that photos are uncropped up to a certain size at which point they are presented as a square photo.)
However, the change means scanning tweets on your Timeline will require more scrolling than before, as the larger images take up more screen space. For power users more concerned with the information – not the media – on Twitter, that could be a downside to this update.
In addition, when you’re tweeting multiple photos at a time, the display format for these posts is now larger than before, too. It also allows you to emphasize the lead image which is presented bigger than the others in the layout.
Twitter is not the only tech company thinking of how to better arrange multi-image posts – Facebook only days ago introduced its own take on media collages where users are able to resize each tile like they do in Instagram’s standalone app called Layout. The idea with these changes is to keep more users engaged on the social platform by highlighting the content they care about in more visually appealing ways.
Twitter’s announcement makes it sound like the update is live for everyone immediately, but not everyone is seeing the changes just yet, we’re hearing. But you should see the updated format soon, if you don’t already. However, the update is only rolling out for Twitter.com for the time being.