Twitter has decided to up the ante on Tweeted Photos, which we all know are worth more than a Thousand Words. Only this time, they’ve decided that the more the merrier with a new Tagging Feature that’s sure to raise fears of Big Brother. Not only that, you can also post up to four (4) photos per tweet, both features that the Twitterati sprung on us on Wednesday March 27th 2014.
Sweet!
I’ve barely caught sight of Facebook’s new Paper platform for delivering News as I’d written about in Facebook adds Trending Topics with Paper coming to make reading the News easier when Twitter decided to pop back on the scene and remind us why they’re better than Facebook or Instagram, which Big Blue had acquired awhile back in April 2012.
This isn’t some boring Logo makeover as reported back in June 2012 in Kelroy’s article Twitter gets a new Logo. This is a honest-to-goodness new feature Twitter fanatics like me will love, especially as I already use Twitter to track News along with Google Alerts as I’d pointed out in Google Alerts Diamond in the Rough coming to Google+ to deliver Technology News and now using Hootsuite, about which I’ll be writing at length at a later time.
This Tagging Feature as well as the multi-photo per tweet feature won’t affect your character limit of 140. The Tagging Feature allows you to tag up to 10 people in your posted photos, with 4 photos per tweet being the default maximum. A prompt of “Who’s in this photo?” hints at facial recognition being incorporated into Twitter, leaving you to decide if that face in your photo is worth identifying at all.
No secret tagging like Facebook; you’re notified once someone has decided to be naughty and tag you as a photo of a goat or something otherwise otherworldly and unrelated to you. As for your multi-phoot tweets, collages are the display meme. Best of all, these features are transferrable to blogger’s pages via OLE (Object Linking and Embedding). Preserving the essence of the Thousands of Words those four photos in your Tweet wish to convey.
Alas, Apple gets this first along with PC users (Rayyyyyyy). As of its launch on Wednesday March 27th 2014, there’s no support for Google Android. Still this is a tad troubling for a different reason; isn’t Tagging an indication that Twitter has Photo-Recognition technology? Is Twitter secretly selling us out to the Authorities and Big Brother? And how DO YOU tag photos when your followers or those you follow usually use an avatar and not a regular photo?
Unanswered questions that are sure to be tested real soon. Until then rest assured that this Twitter Quad-Picture Tagging Feature is coming to a Tweet near you!