Photos on Twitter

They say a picture is worth a thousand words— and that's exceptionally valuable when you only have 140 characters to work with. But sharing photos on Twitter isn't just a great way to say more with less, it's also an extremely powerful way to communicate across the globe. As a mobile service, Twitter has the potential to connect you to the world anywhere at any time. A photo tweeted in Japan can reach the US in less than a second. A photo can go from one to millions in less than a second. Up in the air at 35,000 feet? No big deal. These are our best practices for using photos in your Tweets.

Tweet a photo and give the world a new perspective:

Stefanie Gordon captured the world's attention when she snapped a mid-flight image of the space shuttle Endeavour launching from Florida:

Now, you might not be flying past a launching space shuttle every day, but you can still take and post great pictures that your followers will love. Here are some tips to get you started.

Taking photos:

1. Avoid backlighting photos

Ensure your source of light is aiming at the subject of your photo and not behind it. Get the shot right, then tweet it out.

2. Focus

Use your camera's focus to prevent grainy or blurry images. If you have a touchscreen device, usually touching the screen will focus the camera at that spot. If your camera doesn't have a great focus, try balancing the base of it against something stationary to get the best shot—even just using two hands will help.

3. Take high-resolution shots

Many smart phones have a setting that lets you take a higher definition photos. This means better quality images in low-light situations, which your followers will appreciate. Use your phone's native camera app, it's more stable and faster.

Tweeting photos:

1. Tag the @people in your photo

If you take a photo of someone and they're on Twitter, include their @username in the Tweet. Nathan Fillion does this well:

2. Tweet at just the right moment, especially when you're at an event

Whether it's an award ceremony, concert or even just a dinner party, tweet your images from the event you're attending so they can be consumed in real-time. Think of it as inviting your followers into the party with you. Lea Michele shared this awesome shot that showed off the view from her seat at the Emmys:

The conversation is always most active while an event is happening, so if you're there and you take a photo, share it right away.

3. If you're writing an article that has a photo, include it in your Tweet

This is something that LIFE Magazine does really well. And while this practice may not work for every kind of publication, it'll help those articles that have amazing photos get noticed and read.

Using Twitter Photos:

There are plenty of image sharing services out there, but here's how to upload your photos into Twitter's own system.

  • A big reason to use the pic.twitter uploader, is the photo's permalink can be HUGE (seriously, click that link).
  • Photos count for 20 characters (same as a link) of your Tweet's text
  • If you paste a link to someone else's photo, they'll have attribution that'll look like this:

This is the Tweet:

And here's the photo (notice the attribution):

Ways to upload:

  1. Via the web
  2. Via your iOS device
  3. Twitter for iPhone and iPad
  4. Twitter for Android
  5. Twitter for Mac
  6. Via MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service)
  7. Via TweetDeck

Photo galleries

Another nifty feature about our photos is the gallery view. Galleries offer a great presentation of all the images users have taken and they show up in Twitter Search and on Twitter Profiles. In search, Galleries will include the most relevant tweeted photos from the last seven days. Galleries also live on every profile, and keep a user's most recent photos together in chronological order; these can be photos posted through Twitter's Photo service or a variety of other services, including Instagram, YFrog, and TwitPic.

Some of our favorite user galleries, like Sport Illustrated's Vault and Realtime WWII, use archival photos to delight their followers. It's very powerful stuff— check out this grid from Sports Illustrated's account:

Of course, you can't deny the power of real-time photos, and actress Felicia Day knows this, so she uses Twitter's photos to extend her personality online and share her favorite images (as cool or geeky as they may be) directly with her fans:

Also be sure to check out what Burberry did for Fashion Week 2011, which might be the best example of a brand leveraging Twitter's real-time photo platform. They gave the world a sneak peak at each new design right before it went out onto the runway. Talk about being a trend-setter.

Remember

You never know when you're going to stumble into an iconic photo, but if you keep taking photos you'll be better prepared for when that moment suddenly appears. Just ask Janis Krums, who took the amazing photo of the US Airways flight that landed in the Hudson River in 2009:

If you see other great photos on Twitter, please tweet us their link @TwitterMedia.