Twitter introduces photo tagging and trials replacing retweet with share: what will the changes mean?

“Ultimately, I think Twitter is trying to become more like Facebook,” John Perkins, managing director of RAPP's creative agency, said.

“I’m not sure if the direct application of it for organisations is all that significant, what’s more significant is that twitter is making the platform much more user friendly and making it much more aligned with Facebook than it was before.”

Perkins is not the only one to notice how the changes narrow the differences between the two platforms: especially since Facebook now allows use of hashtags and trending news.

Cake client services director, Lizzy Pollott, suggests that the recent changes could be a sign that Twitter is trying to open itself up to a wider audience: “The interesting development here is the apparent emphasis on simplifying the Twitter user experience in order to attract new users. Not only could it grow Twitter’s user base significantly, but it also would hopefully encourage more conversation on the platform – another bonus for brands looking to get closer to their customers. New users and increased interaction means even more fun to be had by brands and agencies.”

The aim of the most recent move is to make photos ‘more social’, Twitter software engineer César Puerta said. “Tagging people in a picture makes conversations around photos fun and easy. And tagging doesn’t affect character count in the tweet — you can tag up to 10 people in a photo and still have all 140 characters at your disposal, making it easier to connect with your friends. If you’re the one being tagged, you’ll get a notification.”

Perkins is cynical about the difference this will make for marketing: “At the end of the day, most Twitter campaigns – the effective ones – point people towards a URL anyway.”

Lucine Keverian, senior social response manager at Manning Gottlieb OMD , doesn’t think this is the case, suggesting photo tweets are more engaging for followers, as well as the wider audience reached via advertising.

She has research to back her up: Twitter reports that tweets with a photo are 35 per cent more likely to get retweeted than one without. Perhaps the short-form sharing site hopes that more photos will mean more engagement?

“This will give our clients the ability to create ‘gallery style’ tweets which allows us to showcase a range of branded content within one tweet. Whilst Twitter have had the functionality to create Gallery Tweets via their Twitter Card product for a while, this relies on the implementation of meta-tags on a clients website, which would also need to be mobile friendly. This new product allows us to by-pass this making the execution of more creative campaigns easier all round on mobile.”

While there is a mixed review on the photo changes, which are already live for iPhone users, the majority of experts questioned seem strongly against hashtags being removed: and yesterday’s trial of changing ‘retweet’ to ‘share’ led to some more angry messages to Twitter.

But, as Robin Grant, global managing director at We Are Social, pointed out last week “with Twitter’s current focus clearly tuned into keeping new users engaged, rather than placating its existing community, it’s unlikely the prospect of short-term protest will disrupt its long-term plans.”