Twitter is growing up, and the latest new feature set includes the ability to tag up to 10 people in a photo, as well as the ability to add up to four photos to a tweet. But — and this is big — those tags won’t count towards the total character limit. Suddenly, tweets seem kind of big.
Now, how these new features will affect how people use Twitter is a curious mystery. On one hand, tagging features aren’t necessarily Earth-shattering. Instagram got tagging almost a year ago, and it still works fine . On the other hand, when you couple the tagging with the photo album feature, it’s pretty obvious that Twitter’s opening itself up to me a much more image-driven platform. (And those rumours about streamlining mentions and hashtags might be true.) After all, it needs to compete with Instagram!
But as with all things Twitter — the @ mention, the hashtag, the retweet — users will probably decide how this will work. [Twitter]