Twitter — Picture this: More Icons Everywhere

In Twitter’s newest update 5.12 they describe why they’ve added inline videos and pictures. In previous versions these were an extra tap away on the detail cards. I understand this move and agree with it.

So many of the great moments you share on Twitter are made even better with photos or with videos from Vine. These rich Tweets can bring your followers closer to what’s happening, and make them feel like they are right there with you.

We want to make it easier for everyone to experience those moments on Twitter. That’s why starting today, timelines on Twitter will be more visual and more engaging: previews of Twitter photos and videos from Vine will be front and center in Tweets. To see more of the photo or play the video, just tap.

But, they also made one other slight adjust to the visual timeline — they added retweet, favorite, and reply icons to each row below the content.

We’ve also made it easier for you to reply, retweet or favorite a Tweet without leaving your timeline; you can tap to do that right inside the Tweets you see in your timeline.

This, I don’t agree with. Twitter has had swipeable trays with extra functions since the days of Tweetie. It’s a great way of providing users with quick access to more functions without cluttering up the timeline. But in this update, they added those icons to each row making the timeline harder to cognatively process. If Twitter thought this to be the best solution, why did they leave the swipeable tray’s still in the app?!

**P.S.** It’s notable this visual enhancement is NOT on the iPad version where a longer & larger timeline make make sense. Neither is the “Conversations” update they announced back in late August.