Twitter emphasises pictures with new look

Twitter has overhauled its look, by emphasising photos as part of a redesign that has quite obviously taken some inspiration from Facebook's Timeline cover photo.

Revealed for the first time by company Dick Costolo this morning on American television, he said that a user's avatar image will now appear in a centralised position, with the uploadable header photo making up the background. The Twitter blog explained that all you had to do was: “Upload an all-new header photo on mobile apps for iPad, iPhone and Android or twitter.com, and the same image will appear whenever anyone views your profile on the web or these apps. You can upload your header photo, which appears above your Tweets, to express yourself instantly, anywhere.”

So far responses to the change seem mixed. Some are condemning the site for beginning to look more like social network rival Facebook, while others think it's “pretty cool.”

Twitter has also updated user profiles, with an emphasis on pictures. No doubt due to the success of services like Facebook bought Instagram. As well as this, the blog post took the opportunity to recommend a few of the “first new profiles”. Promotional tweets has been something the company has dabbled in over the past couple years as it struggled to find a good way to monetise the service – perhaps this is another way of doing that?

KitGuru Says: API changes and now header images. Another feature to shrug off or another reason not to use it? Let us know in the comments below or on our Facebook. Or Twitter.

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