Twitter gets more visual, with better photo display

The old days of Twitter just being 140 characters pushed through SMS are very long gone. Another step towards making it a channel for rich media experiences hit last night, with news that Twitter will no longer be cropping photos in Tweets when you view them in the stream. This is what a portrait-orientation photo will look like:

And this is how galleries will look in the stream:

And it was just in time for the big Apple “news” today:

“This is something only Apple can do.” pic.twitter.com/r2lnvK4adn

— ᶰᵒᵗ Jony Ive (@JonyIveParody) December 8, 2015

The Twitterati react…

Reaction has been mixed. On the positive side:

Photos will now matter even more on https://t.co/pNNWp2M5PM. https://t.co/vhRkUDUtkv pic.twitter.com/Sow3Y74Ws0

— Elana Zak (@elanazak) December 7, 2015

And Elana is right. Twitter engagement has been heavily driven by images for a long time now. This is just going to increase that.

On the negative:

ffs twitter’s new photo layout has ruined everything pic.twitter.com/h1pxFS3nqi

— Tom Phillips (@flashboy) December 7, 2015

Mourn for the wits of Twitter.