Twitter’s making a slight correction in its approach on its visual presentation options within tweets.
As you may recall, last year, Twitter rolled out an updated Twitter Camera, which included a new way to add colorful caption panels to images captured through the native camera option, while those images also appeared larger in timelines.
Yeah, nah, that’s not working for Twitter anymore.
Today, the platform has announced that it’s rolling back these changes, along with a couple of other tweaks to the native camera function.
And to make Tweeting *pictures and videos* easier, we’re making some changes to the camera. Photos and videos will no longer appear larger in the timeline and we’re removing the colored captions. Essentially, it’s now the same to Tweet a photo taken on Twitter or uploaded. ???? https://t.co/AKbUDvGKhr
— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) May 18, 2020
So, as you can see in the original tweet, users will now be able to add up to four images captured via the camera, and reply and retweet with photos and videos. Which, I thought you already could. In fact, I’m sure you already could, and when I first read that announcement, I pretty much dismissed it. But, evidently, the native camera functionality, specifically, has been altered.
But the main change is the removal of the colorful captions and larger image format.
When Twitter first rolled out the option last March, it seemed like a way for Twitter to align more with the broader shift towards visual storytelling through the full-screen, vertical presentation of Stories. But given that Twitter is now slowly evolving its own Stories option in ‘Fleets’, it probably doesn’t need to do that in regular tweets anymore, and the extra formatting may have felt out of place within timelines for some users.
Given this, it makes sense for Twitter to roll it back. Note too that Twitter acquired Chroma Labs back in February, a team lead by a former Instagram product manager that specializes in the Stories format. That could also be part of the decision to remove the presentation style from regular tweets, and put more focus on Fleets for such options instead.
The impact is probably fairly minimal. For Twitter to remove the option, that would likely suggest that it’s not widely used, while as noted, it may have felt a bit out of place for images captured through the native camera anyway.
So, back to normal, and we await the arrival of Fleets, which is still being tested among users in Brazil.
