Twitter is showing up late to the sticker party with a new feature that lets you add emojis to photos. Now you can use the #sticker feature to put a dash of pizazz into your phone snaps without eating into that precious 140-character limit.
Twitter also lets you search through photos using the icons like visual hashtags. It’s a neat twist that tries to make up for the company’s late arrival to the sticker craze. If you click on any of the emojis in the photo, you’ll pull up a new timeline of other people’s photos from around the world using the same emoji.
It’s even good for organizing your own photos. You can avoid manually sifting through piles of photo history by searching through them by emoji.
If you use Snapchat, Twitter stickers will feel pretty familiar. You can resize them, rotate them, and add multiple stickers to each post. Hundreds of images are available for you to choose from, including the familiar Unicode emojis as well as some original work by Twitter.
Coming soon! Unleash your creativity by adding fun #Stickers to your photos on Twitter: https://t.co/Ph92Oivyhy pic.twitter.com/NZoM6nHenD
— Twitter (@twitter) June 27, 2016
It’s pretty rare to find a communications app that doesn’t come with some sort of sticker feature nowadays. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and LINE already left Twitter in the dust a long time ago on this. The fact that Twitter made their stickers searchable is pretty unique but time will tell whether it will be popular enough to boost user engagement or placate the company’s increasingly anxious shareholders.
For now, Twitter’s stickers can be added to your photo at the photo editing stage on iOS and Android apps. You can’t add stickers from twitter.com but you will be able to click on them to pull up the hashtag search. The company says the feature is in the midst of rolling out and will be available to everyone within a couple weeks.
So get ready for a brand new way to doll up your shots. Add some tasteful fun to your portraits of Spot and Fido with a cowboy hat icon. Maybe you want to completely bombard your audience with an outbreak of palm trees and sunglasses on your vacation photo, or you can always just compare your works of art to everyone else.
