On Wednesday, March 26, Twitter announced two new mobile features that allow photos to be more social.
Twitter users are now able to tag up to 10 people in photos uploaded to Twitter, in addition to uploading up to four photos in a single tweet.
Twitter photo tagging
Tagging pictures is nothing new to social media. Facebook has allowed photos to be tagged for as long as I can remember, and you can even tag pictures on Instagram. So it makes sense that Twitter would also capitalize on a feature many enjoy.
Not only can you tag up to 10 people in one photo, the tags don’t count in the 140 characters of the Tweet. This will allow you to connect with more people, without sacrificing any of the already precious characters.
And for those of you who don’t like to be tagged in pictures; have no fear. All you have to do is adjust your privacy settings to avoid being tagged by anyone and/or everyone. If you choose to allow people to tag you in pictures on Twitter, you’ll receive a notification each time you’re tagged.
Here’s a quick guide to change your photo privacy settings:
At the top right corner, go to “Settings”
Click on “Security and privacy”
In the Privacy section, choose from one of three photo tagging options
Easy enough if you ask me. Let’s move onto the photo collages.
Photo Collages
If one photo to tag all of your friends isn’t enough, you’ll have up to three other pictures to upload into a collage format. Although this feature is currently only available on the iPhone app, it’ll soon be accessible to Android and twitter.com users.
Here’s an example of how you can upload a series of photos (just make sure you update your Twitter app first!):
When composing a Tweet, click on the image icon to select your photos. When you choose one picture, it may take you back to the “Compose Tweet” screen. If that happens just re-click on the image icon and add the rest of your pictures.
Once your photos are up, there will be an option to tag the photo.
Then compose your message and publish! On your phone, your Tweet will look similar to this:
This is how collage photos look on twitter.com:
And here’s how they show up on TweetDeck:
Seeing how simple of a process this was, I’m curious to see how businesses will adapt these features and use them to their advantage.
Examples of how businesses can use the new Twitter photo features:
- Advertising and marketing campaigns
- Event promotion
- Twitter Chat invites
- Photo contests
- Sharing images in a unique manner (breaking up one photo into four different parts)
- Sharing themed images
- Sharing old images
- Organization culture photo (congratulating employees, documenting and sharing organization outings, etc.)
How do you plan to use these new photo features for your business or personal life? Let us know in the comments below.