Banner photo by nito.

It looks like Twitter is starting to be aware of the power of imagery. And this week, the Twitter team announced a few big changes of how you can share your photos utilizing the Twitter platform.

Twitter lets you share photos, in real time, with everyone or with the people you choose. So you can join a bigger conversation. And tell your story in pictures.

So now that they’ve recognized the power that other apps like Facebook, Instagram and even SnapChat are accumulating from the photo sharing community, they’ve really solidified Twitter’s feature set.

Add Photos From Your Smartphone

Twitter fully supports mobile shooting. This is nothing new, but a gentle reminder that your “on-the-go” photos can be displayed.

  • Tap the camera icon, to use your phone’s camera to shoot a new picture.
  • Tap the photo icon to choose an image from your camera roll.
  • For the desktop, just click the Add Photo button in the new tweet window.

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Photo Filters

The very thing that launched the Instagram app into a photo sharing frenzy is also available inside the actual Twitter app. By tapping on the filters tab, you can customize your photos how you see fit with different filters and variations. You can also swipe through to see the options and even crop the photo. to a better aspect ration

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Share Multiple Photos

Well now isn’t this fun. You can now upload a gallery of images inside each Tweet. By tapping the photo icon, you can choose up to four shots. For some reason this hasn’t made it to the desktop version yet, let’s hope it’s not far behind

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Tag Friends

The functionality of both Facebook and Instagram is now in the Twitter photo sharing. Once you upload your photo, click on “Who’s in this photo?” to tag your friends.

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Direct Messaging

Private messages aren’t anything new but now you can send private photos directly to your contacts. This allows for sen-private sharing (meaning your friend can still of course pull the picture or screen capture it and re-share).

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The Future

It’s good to see that Twitter is expanding their focus on photography. Be sure to check out Rich Harrington’s article on too which got a photo friendly makeover.

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