Twitter Adds New Camera Feature To Enhance User Experience

Last month, according to TechCrunch’s report, Twitter was redesigning its camera feature, now the company has finished and is rolling it out. The redesign is said to allow capturing images, videos live footage and connecting them to global conversations.

Now, by swiping left from the platform’s timeline, users will get the new camera which won’t be included in the tweet composer any more. After capturing some media, users can add a hashtag, location, or a few words on a colored label. However, most importantly, the media will be shown in a bigger, more immersive format in the feed along with the imagery appearing before the text.

While Twitter doesn’t add Stories or any features similar to that of Instagram, it still wants to offer people a more real-time lens to view the world instead of a simple interpretation through words of mouth. With the upgraded camera, people may shoot media more, making Twitter friendlier to newcomers who are often overwhelmed by walls of text. Also, more visual content is likely to help add visual ads into the feed more easily.

Twitter tells TechCrunch, who reported the news, that it isn’t giving an algorithmic boost in the main timeline to tweets created with the new feature. However, a Twitter spokesperson said that the company will let Camera tweets have their spotlight in the WhatsHappening section in the Explore tab.

On the timeline, when users swipe to the left, a camera shutter button will show up which they tap on to snap photos or hold to capture videos of up to two minutes. With a mini-swipe over, users can record audio or video live broadcasts. After users finish recording, the app will suggest hashtags based on nearby events or other signals, they can also add their own texts and locations. Users can select one of the six colors to overlay the tags, with which Twitter can direct the tweets into different sections in WhatsHappening.

For now, the feature doesn’t come with filters, light enhancements, stickers, or other creative tools. The social platform said it wants to focus on improving conversations rather than just beautifying the media.

Twitter has long been slow in changing its app due to the fear of losing its long-time loyalists, but that has caused the platform to fall behind others. So it decided to turn over a new leaf, instead of sitting around perfecting one feature at a time, it needs to take risks and just experiment new ideas.

Shifting to visual communication without chasing the Stories trend could be a smart move as we’re living in a world that is talking through images more and more.