Twitter Introduces New Visual Enhancement Options for Attached Images and Videos

Twitter's improved visual customization and editing tools have been in development for a few months and are now being rolled out to more users.

Twitter is adding new visual enhancement capabilities, as shown in this notification from @WFBrother, that will allow users to add 'stickers, text, cropping, and more' to their uploaded videos and images, then attach them to tweets, perhaps giving them more presence and creative style in the feed.

We initially reported on this test in September, however it had not yet been released to the public, but users are now starting to notice the new options on their Twitter app.

The update introduces a new UI for your tweet visuals, which is more simplified and consistent with the visual editing tools in other apps, while also offering additional options, as you can see here.

@WFBrother also uploaded these side-by-side comparison shots of the existing visual editor (left) and the new format.

In terms of improvements, Twitter has basically taken the core visual features of Fleets and incorporated them into this new UI, giving you more options for creating full-screen visual presentations within your tweeted images.

That's exactly what Twitter claimed it would do. Twitter stated in August that it would be taking the lessons learnt from Fleets and applying them to new areas of development as part of its announcement on the option's retirement.

“Soon, we’ll test updates to the Tweet composer and camera to incorporate features from the Fleets composer – like the full-screen camera, text formatting options, and GIF stickers.”

So, basically, that's all there is - and, as previously stated, it could provide more options to put together more creative, stand-out tweets, especially given Twitter's changed visual display structure, which now shows larger images within tweet streams.

Fleets has been reduced to a minor add-on for tweeted visuals, which is a little saddening in some respects.

That's especially true given Twitter's acquisition of Chroma Stories, a visual editor focused on the Stories format, last year, which seemed to hint to the company adding some fascinating, creative visual improvements and templates connected with the option.

Fleets were killed out before they arrived due to a lack of user engagement, but Chroma's aesthetic styling and tools seemed promising, and I was excited to see what Twitter could accomplish with the new options.

However, it appears that Twitter is only salvaging what it can of the development work it put into Fleets at the moment. While Twitter has acknowledged that Fleets did help some users engage more in the app, it's clear that integrating these tools and options is no longer a priority - which is a pity, because they seem like they could have provided some unique, interesting visual elements if they had been implemented properly.

But it's just guesswork; we do know that Twitter tested Fleets and found that few people were interested in it, at least not enough to justify maintaining it. As a result, we now have these new visual tools, which may be intriguing, but appear to be less so than what may have been.

Still, perhaps Twitter has something else in store for tweet visuals that we haven't seen yet, hidden among the company's many other initiatives.

We'll have to make do with a new visual editor till then. We've reached out to Twitter for further information on the new choices' implementation, and we'll update this post as soon as we hear back.

UPDATE: The following information about the new camera features has been shared by Twitter:

"We’re testing some new updates to the Twitter Camera and Twitter Gallery that will give our customers more ways to creatively express themselves in their Tweets."

At this time, the test is only offered to a select number of users.