About two months after Facebook introduced embedded posts that include photos, Twitter has upgraded its embeds to better showcase its photos.
Twitter, which announced the move on its blog on Thursday, illustrated the upgrade with this Aug. 11 tweet from astronaut Chris Hadfield:
Good morning! Perspective – Sunday is a fine day to go for a walk with a friend. pic.twitter.com/P3uDfjYsEU
— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) August 11, 2013
“As you can see from @CMDR_Hatfield’s Tweet embedded above, we’ve put the photo front and center, with a bigger and bold visual focus on the media,” Brian Ellin, Twitter’s project manager, platform, wrote in the blog post. “Both landscape and portrait photos now have more room to show their pixels when the Tweets are embedded online.”
Reemerging into society after backpacking ~35 miles through Yosemite’s Grand Canyon of Tuolumne River. My legs hurt. pic.twitter.com/TkjNgKn6b8
— Bill Couch (@couch) July 7, 2013
Improving the photo experience make them more viable for inclusion in articles now that there’s competition from Facebook. Facebook’s embeds came as the company was revving up its real-time marketing opportunities (shortly before, the company introduced hashtags). Instagram, a unit of Facebook, launched embedded posts in July, shortly before Facebook did the same. Instagram’s embeds include video as well as photos. Twitter’s Vine videos are also embeddable.
For a short period, Facebook had not only caught up with Twitter, but also surpassed it by letting news organizations run richer embeds in their stories. Now, the two appear to be on equal footing.
Image: Mary Turner/Getty Images
