Twitter has been working to make the tweet a self-contained entity for some time now. They want the tweet to contain all of the media that a user needs to get the full experience – with no need to click away to access photos, videos, or even article content. These fuller tweets have existed on desktop for some time, and today Twitter’s bringing that rich experience to mobile, inside the discover tab.
The mobile discover tab now features media-rich tweets that allows users to preview photos and article summaries without ever tapping on the tweet.
It’s all thanks to Twitter Cards:
“Using Twitter cards, you’ll now see Tweets in Discover with links to news and photos rather than the former story previews which were not interactive. And supporting Twitter cards on the backend means we can more directly improve the user experience in our native apps, too. You’ll see content from cards partners display as a preview in the stream, so that you’ll get headlines and publication names for story summaries and photo previews rather than shortened URLs,” says Twitter engineering manager Daniel Loreto.
The mobile Discover tab has also become more like the desktop Discover section. Now you can “view all tweets” to see relevant content from users in your network.
“We want Discover to be the place where you find the best of that content relevant to you, even if you don’t necessarily know everyone involved,” says Loreto.
Twitter has also improved on their search function, for both the desktop and mobile experience. Photos and videos are now front and center, as Twitter has placed them above the tweet stream in search results for people, events, and hashtags.
Twitter has also added the ability for users to see the context behind the tailored ranking of search results.
“About a year ago we launched tailored ranking of your search results, but until now you couldn’t see why a specific Tweet might matter more to you. Now you can see context like who favorited or retweeted right there in the Tweet,” says Twitter.
You can download the new version of both the iOS and Android apps today.