Well, Twitter has been busy lately.
On the heels of last week's announcement that the remaining people using "old Twitter" will be switched to "new Twitter," the social network has released some updates for all of its users.
The new features include a photo service baked into Twitter and some tweaks to the tabbed navigation for browser-based users.
Twitter announced the addition of the photo service Tuesday, complete with a slick video that says little. In short, you can now upload photos up to 3MB through Twitter. Photos will appear on the right side of the browser for people accessing Twitter with a Web browser.
But there's a problem for people using some third-party clients: Users cannot see Twitter images inline, unlike photos uploaded by some other photo services. Instead, Twitter adds a URL of the tweet, which will display the photo when clicked.
This was the case with a browser-based version of Twitter and a desktop version of Tweetdeck. A mobile version of Seesmic refused to display the image outright.
That said, Twitter promises future goodies, including photo galleries and a third-party API for the photo service.
One other note: Characters in the photo's URL will count against a tweet's 140-character limit (as is also the case with third-party services).
On Wednesday, Twitter announced the changes to the tabbed navigation users will encounter when accessing Twitter with a Web browser.
In short, the middle tab, "activity," offers users a chance to see who their friends recently followed and which tweets their friends retweeted or marked as a favorite. Another tab "@username," will alert a user whenever the user or a tweet is retweeted, mentioned, replied to, or marked as a favorite.
It's a move that emulates functions found in Tweetdeck, which Twitter acquired late this spring.
(Note: When I wrote this, my account had not yet been upgraded with the new tabs, so I've relied on a pretty good writeup from The Huffington Post.)
Will all this help Twitter compete with Google+, Facebook and LinkedIn? Here's how Twitter stacks up, according to Hubspot's main blog.
