Twitter today announced a major update to its mobile app, arriving just days after the company released a new app for testing upcoming new features.
“See it? Tweet it! Our updated camera is just a swipe away, so you get the shot fast,” reads the announcement. A simple swipe upward now instantly takes you to the Twitter camera, which is much quicker than the old multi-step process.
Before today, you had to first tap the New Tweet button, then hit the Camera button in the tweet composer before being able to take an image or video.
Engadget called it the biggest changes to Twitter since the company shifted to 280 characters. While Twitter’s revamped camera is its answer to Stories, Engadget says it doesn’t really feel like a clone of Snapchat or Instagram Stories.
Once you get the update, the first thing you’ll notice is how much quicker it is to access the camera now: All you have to do is open the Twitter app on your phone, swipe left and you’re in. From there, you’ll have the Capture and Live options.
With Capture, you can either do a quick tap to snap a picture or hold it for a couple of seconds to record a video—those can be up to about two minutes right now, but Twitter says that will likely change in the future. If you hit the Live button, you can then stream to your followers using Periscope, Twitter’s video-streaming service.
TechCrunch especially liked how the Twitter app will show your media in a larger, more immersive format in the feed.
From the TechCrunch report:
When you swipe left on the timeline, you’ll see a Snapchat style camera shutter button that records photos with a tap, and looping videos up to two minutes long if you hold.
A mini-swipe over and you can record video or audio-only live broadcasts without any Periscope branding (will that app just become Twitter Live?). Twitter will then recommend hashtags based on big nearby events and other signals, or you can add your own as well as a location and text.
You can choose between six colors for the TV news-style chyron those tags on overlayed on that help Twitter route the content into the imagery carousels for its different What’s Happening sections.
While there are no stickers, filters, light enhancements or other creative tools in the Twitter camera. you can access these existing tools through the image uploader in the tweet composer.
“Twitter tells me it wants to focus on tags that will pipe content into the right conversations instead of beautifying the media,” according to TechCrunch.
The updated Twitter camera is rolling out to all users over the next few days. Sing the update is a staggered release, give it a few days if you don’t see it yet in your Twitter app.
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