Twitter Now Fills Your Feed With Photos

Remember the old days, when you used to have to click on a picture inTwitter to see it? No longer. As of Tuesday, Twitter is making your photos and videos show up in your stream by default — making the service look a lot more like Facebook.

On one hand, that means less clicking around and a more visual timeline. On the other hand, you may be exposed to too many pictures — some of which you really didn't want to see, especially not with someone looking over your shoulder.

The change is taking place immediately online and in the updated iOS and Android Twitter apps, the company said in a blog post.

"These rich Tweets can bring your followers closer to what’s happening, and make them feel like they are right there with you," wrote Michael Sippey, the company's VP of product. "We want to make it easier for everyone to experience those moments on Twitter."

What Sippey didn't mention was something that became immediately apparent: photos in promoted tweets just became, in effect, display ads.

The change applies to Vine videos and pictures uploaded to Twitter, not to Instagram links (the company's relationship with Instagram having been rocky since last year). Last month, Twitter added larger, richer photos within embedded tweets, but your timeline of tweets remained untouched until now.

It didn't take long for users to point out the potential pitfalls:

On the iPhone and Android app, at least, there is a new setting that allows you to turn the in-line photos off. This setting does not appear to exist on the web version.

Do you love the new Twitter with in-line images or hate it? Let us know in the comments.

Image: Gabriel Bouys/AFP