Twitter has updated its Android and iOS apps with facility to send photos through direct messages (DMs). The update has also made access to direct messages easy with an icon on the top bar.

Though users cannot send photos through direct messages in the website (twitter.com), they can view the pictures received in DMs.

Swipe feature

The new Twitter app also allows users to swipe from the “Home timeline to the Discover timeline to find trends, popular Tweets and new accounts” and also swipe to the Activity timeline “to see Tweets and accounts that are popular among people you follow”.

Notifications

On the iOS app, there are in-app notifications that are displayed when users get a DM or favourite, retweet and reply to their Tweets.

On the Android app, users can turn on mobile notifications for specific users by tapping the star on their profile.

Taking on Snapchat

The ability to attach photos to direct messages will also help Twitter to take on apps like Snapchat and other messaging clients that allow users to send photos to specific users. Snapchat also destroys the photo received by the users within seconds, so that there is no trace.

Earlier Twitter had introduced photo editing features, including overlays similar to that of Instagram. Twitter also has a separate video app called Vine.

“For the first time, you can share and view photos via direct message on your mobile phone,” Jeremy Gordon, the company’s senior director of product engineering, wrote in a post on the Twitter blog yesterday.

“We’ve also introduced a new tab in the navigation bar that makes it easy to access direct messages – they’re just one tap away from wherever you are on Twitter.”

The Instagram-style feature is in the latest Twitter applications tailored for Apple or Android smartphones, according to Gordon.

“There are a bunch of other great updates in this release,” Gordon said.

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