Twitter updates mobile apps to make sharing and viewing photos easier

Twitter has updated its mobile apps to make sharing and viewing of photos via messages even easier, as a result of which users can now send and receive photos via direct messages and swipe back and forth between time lines, on their handsets.

Twitter has also now introduced a new tab in the navigation bar that makes it easy to access DMs, which are just a tap away from wherever users are on Twitter.

Users can now swipe their Home timeline to the Discover timeline to find trends, popular Tweets and new accounts tailored for them and then swipe to their Activity timeline to see Tweets and accounts that were popular among people they followed.

The release also has several other great updates, for instance, on Twitter for iOS, new in-app notifications now showed users when people sent them a DM or favourite, retweet and reply to their Tweets.

Further on Twitter for Android, users can easily turn on mobile notifications for specific users by tapping the star on their profile.

The messaging service is now displayed prominently in the navigation bar at the bottom of the home screen, so that it was only a tap away as against previously when, users had to navigate to the ''Me'' screen and from there open the messaging service.

With mobile-to-mobile messaging, a hot area now, Facebook recently updated its own Messenger service to let people message each other even if they were not Facebook friends. A number of other services like SnapChat, WhatsApp and WeChat are also attracting users.

According to commentators, the changes to Twitter could make it more widely used for messaging and cut the time people spent using those other apps. The service does not however, offer some of the extra features, though, like SnapChat's vanishing photos.

Twitter counts South Korea's Kakao, a messaging service, and Line, a calling and messaging app popular in Japan, as among its biggest competitors and commentators say Twitter's expanded messaging features could help it compete better there too.

With the update, users can also swipe between different screens in Twitter. From the Home screen, users can now swipe to the Discover page to see trending topics and popular tweets, and the Activity page to see tweets and accounts that were popular among the people they followed.

There are also new features specific to different platforms. In the iOS app, in-app notifications now alert people when they receive a direct message or a tweet gets favorited or replied to. And on Android, people can turn on notifications for specific users.