Twitter gets a paparazzi makeover: Bigger, bolder profiles, photo stream on mobile

Twitter released two new updates this morning, making user profiles much more visual and updating the Twitter experience on mobile with a new photostream widget.

An all-new header photo — somewhat reminiscent of Facebook’s cover photo — now helps your Twitter profile stand out better. Rather than just a few pixels for a headshot or a logo, the new header photo can display much more: multiple images, a portrait in a setting, or whatever your creativity allows within the limits of about 520-by-260 pixels.

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It also, not incidentally, creates a clear differentiation between Twitter controls, menus, and space on the left, and your personal photo, tweets, and account information on the right.

Here’s a simple visual overview:

According to Twitter, the same profile photo will appear on Twitter.com, iPad, iPhone, and Android.

In addition, Twitter updated its mobile apps to create a more visual experience, introducing “photo streams” thataggregate photos uploaded in tweets over time in one location within the Twitter application. It’s a swipable element — simply scroll forward and back in time by swiping from side to side.

On iPad, the photo stream looks like this:

Tapping on a photo will bring it up fullscreen, much like this image of a T-shirt someone gave me at a conference:

In addition to the new profile and photo-display opportunities, Twitter users still may upload a custom background, which displays on the web but not mobile platforms. Conversely, the photo stream doesn’t show up on the web.

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The goal, according to Twitter, is to “get to know people better through their pictures” and announced the updates with a blog post titled “because you have more to show.”

I’m not sure what the pic above says about me, and I’m not sure there’s much more that I want to show.

But I do know I now have some work to do to update my Twitter profile. …

photo credit: [phil h] via photo pin cc

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