06 May Twitter Lets Users Add Photos, Videos, and GIFs to Retweets by @MattGSouthern
Twitter is expanding the ‘retweet with comment’ option to include photos, videos, and GIFs.
It's easy to express yourself by Retweeting with a comment. What if you could take it a step further and include media? Starting today, you can! Retweet with photos, a GIF, or a video to really make your reaction pop. Available on iOS, Android, and https://t.co/AzMLIfU3jB. pic.twitter.com/Oir5Hpkb2F
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) May 6, 2019
Twitter shared some information about the development process of this feature, which sounds surprisingly complex and involved collaboration between multiple teams.
“Teamwork and collaboration are a huge part of Twitter’s engineering culture. A project like this brought together and saw contributions from multiple teams across Twitter Eng.”
Developing this feature required multiple teams because it impacts two different areas: the tweet detail page and timelines.
Upgraded retweets are available now, but be advised the actual implementation is a little underwhelming.
When you add media to a retweet, the tweet being shared loses visibility. Instead, the media is shown prominently while only a link to the other tweet is displayed.
Here’s an example:
So, unless users click on the link, it’s not immediately clear what’s being retweeted.
To that end, I’m not entirely sure this couldn’t have been accomplished before.
What’s to stop users from composing a tweet, pasting a link to another tweet, and adding a GIF?
This new way is faster, but in the end, it looks the same. It would be preferable if a GIF retweet contained both the media and the original tweet in the same view.
Twitter adds that the ability to retweet with a GIF was among the most requested by users.
However, Twitter users are taking the announcement of this feature as an opportunity to reinforce their demands for an edit button.
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