As someone who self-identifies as technologically impaired, I would really appreciate when a website or social media platform was heavily based on visual content because it made it easier for me to stay engaged. Quite recently, I have seen many articles regarding the increase in use of visual content by businesses. However, what has not been brought to light is how social media platforms have increasingly integrated visual content to keep users engaged. One such example is Twitter.

The human brain responds to visual content roughly 60,000 times faster than written content. After stating this fact, I feel a little better saying that one social media platform I personally have not enjoyed using has been Twitter. For me it was a lot of text and a lot of scrolling. As someone who is not much of a technology user, it seems a little tedious to use.

However, when I was reading an article about tips for businesses to increase their visual content online, I realized that Twitter has been taking steps to also make its platform more visually appealing, which will ultimately make it more user-friendly. The article spoke about using visual content to encourage comments and to illustrating brand presence with the use of multiple images. It also encouraged the use of memes, videos, photos and other graphics.

With the launch of Twitter’s new feature called Moments, I believe Twitter has finally realized that the trend of increasing visual content and marketing is not a fad. This style of information consumption is preferred by users. Moments allows users to have access to content such as tweets, videos and GIFS.

This will hopefully allow Twitter to capture users like myself that are currently disengaged from the platform.  As referenced in the article by Drew Olanoff, “the feature is for people who have tried Twitter once or twice and it just never stuck with them for whatever reason.”

Links to the original articles:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/250810

http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/06/project-glacier/#.leze0p:YJph