The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Twitter

Twitter's ‘visual’ overhaul draws furious instant backlash

Author

By Steven Raeburn, N/A

October 30, 2013 | 4 min read

Twitter’s latest overhaul of its onscreen layout has drawn an instantly hostile online response from users who have rejected the new ‘visual’ interface.The layout overhaul was quietly rolled out late on 29 October, ahead of its stock market flotation, with the intent of making the social network more visual.The most obvious change is that photographs attached to tweets are now automatically displayed without the user clicking to open them. This directly impacts the volume of tweets that the user can see on their screen, and omits the choice of electing not to view the photos.“So many of the great moments you share on Twitter are made even better with photos or with videos from Vine. These rich Tweets can bring your followers closer to what’s happening, and make them feel like they are right there with you,” said Twitter's Michael Sippey, explaining the change.“We want to make it easier for everyone to experience those moments on Twitter. That’s why starting today, timelines on Twitter will be more visual and more engaging: previews of Twitter photos and videos from Vine will be front and center in Tweets.”He also said that it would now be easier to reply, retweet or favorite a Tweet without leaving your timeline.Twitter has been criticised for losing ground to Pinterest and Instagram.

The immediate response has been overwhelmingly negative

Twitter

More from Twitter

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +