stopwatchTwitter updated its iOS and Android apps today to make tweeting pictures faster and better. And it showed us the benefits via Vine, the social network’s own video-sharing startup.

The promise? Tweet a photo in under six seconds.

Get your stopwatch ready:

In my tests, I wasn’t nearly that fast, mostly because I wanted to choose a half-decent photo.

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But the changes also ensure that you’ll see a full preview of your photo, not just the small, cropped version. In addition, now there’s a dedicated button to go straight to your phone’s photo gallery, instead of first going to the camera, then to the gallery.

Twitter Android app notificationsThat’s probably not a big deal to most people, but it is faster and easier, and it fits with Twitter’s focus on continuing to become more visual, more media-centric than its long-gone text-only origins.

Interestingly, the update for Android also includes better notifications. The Notifications Drawer not includes more detail — you can swipe the Twitter update to expand it and get more details (in fact, almost the whole tweet).

And one more update for iOS now has tweets filling the full screen horizontally, as Twitter removed the borders around the timeline view.

photo credit: purplemattfish via photopin cc

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