Using mobile Web version of Twitter? Get ready for updates

One hundred and forty characters are no longer enough for microblogging platform Twitter. As social media users gravitate toward a more visual Web, Twitter has started rolling out the second phase of its “expanded tweets” tweets feature. Both Twitter’s iPhone and Android mobile apps have related stories been updated to include Twitter’s new expanded tweets — enabling microbloggers to see image and video content previews from Twitter’s selected partners when they click on a link contained within a tweet. “When you tap a Tweet linking to a Kickstarter project, for example, you can play its video directly from the Tweet details view in your app. You can also read article summaries when you tap Tweets linking to sources like The Atlantic or play videos or view images when you expand Tweets linking to websites like Etsy and Vimeo,” said Twitter project manager Sung Hu Kim in a post on the company’s blog. The change reflects a wider trend toward visual storytelling taking place within social media. As image- and video-sharing social networks like Pinterest, Instagram and Viddy gain viral popularity with users, more mature social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are updating their design to cater for a more visual community of users. Twitter introduced expanded tweets on its website less than a month ago partnering with websites including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Breaking News, TIME, WWE, BuzzFeed, TMZ, Lifetime and Daily Motion. Twitter has also made updates to notifications and search within its mobile apps. Both Twitter for Android and iOS now support push notifications for tweets so you can configure the app to send you a notification when one of the people you follow posts something new. Twitter has improved the search experience on its mobile apps too with enhanced autocomplete and additional name suggestions when you search for people.