Twitter is is trying to become the leading social media platform. Earlier this week Twitter made some changes that allow users to post more than one photo in a tweet with out it affecting the amount of characters a person uses for each tweet. Twitter is now allowing four photos per tweet, instead of having to tag your friends in the tweet, Twitter is allowing the user to tag your followers or people you follow within the pictures. I believe this is a great new thing for Twitter, it is still micro-blogging but gives the user the ability to share more of what they want compressed into 140 characters or less.
Although this is not the first time Twitter made a change similar to the photo share capability. Twitter made the same change with the "Re-tweet" where the user can re-share someones tweet onto there timeline. In the past users would have to manually label a tweet they had liked and wanted to share, by typing a "RT" in front of the tweet. Twitter has become more user-friendly and its goal is to make it more simplistic for newer users who are not familiar with Twitter.
While Twitter has made some changes to make their service more popular, a report about Instagram came out this week by a researcher, saying that Instagram has grown to an average of 40.5 million users monthly while for Twitter is 38 million monthly users. When I saw this statistic, it amazes me that Instagram is more popular than Twitter. According to "Information Week", they say that, "Instagram usage in the US has ramped up rapidly and is already maturing, reaching regular usage levels nearly matching Twitter's, particularly on smartphones and among millennials and Gen Xers," the report said. "By the end of this year, almost 25% of US smartphone users will snap a photo, slap on a filter, and share their creations with their friends on Instagram on a monthly basis."
I enjoy using both social media networks, I use Twitter on a regular basis for my news, sports, and friends. The new changes for Twitter is very cool feature and excited to try it out. Some people may disagree and say Twitter is becoming more like Facebook and not keeping it short and sweet, but rather changing the options. Instagram is great too, gives us the opportunity to share our photos with twitter, as a hyperlink in a tweet. My predictions for Twitter and Instagram are that they will continue to make their networks more user friendly and enjoyable for people.
The way the two interact is great to boost user-ship on both sites (Instagram links in tweets, as you had mentioned). Perhaps the way social media sites interact will continue to grow and give people more and more opportunity to use the sites in different ways. I'm not a huge fan of the four-photo feature on Twitter, as I'm imagining teenage girls posting four different angles of their coffee in the same tweet, but like many other technological upgrades, I'm sure it will grow on me with use.
ReplyDeleteTwitter should be applauded for the attempt at keeping things new (and in turn, exciting to use!), whether or not this new feature is a flop.
Either way, it seems that visuals are all the rage in the social media world- people want to see, not just read. Instagram has made an impressive step in usage and popularity, and I'm excited to see just how far the site goes.