Twitter's new stickers work like visual hashtags

tech2 News StaffJun 28, 2016 11:33:03 IST

Twitter introduced a stickers feature that allows users to slap visual stamps onto images. Hearts, kisses, emoticons, cats, pizza slices, devil's horns and alien faces are some of the available stickers. There are a wide variety of stickers available in different categories, but users cannot make their own stickers.

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/747429521440202752

The interesting feature in stickers is how they behave like hashtags. When viewing an image with a sticker, users can click or tap on the stickers in the image. This takes users to a page for that particular sticker, which has a stream of all images using the same sticker. For example, this is the page for the 10101 (did you read that as LOLOL?) sticker, a thumbs up. Multiple stickers can be added to an image, there is no limit. The stickers can only be added on mobile devices, but can be searched for on the website as well.

https://twitter.com/twitter/status/747429936726573056

The inability to upload custom stickers into the system prevents the use of stickers exactly in the way hashtags are used. This opens up the potential for movements, hacktivists or social media trends to hijack a particular sticker. Twitter can also introduce new stickers themed around public holidays, or events.

The stickers update has began rolling out around the world for Android and iOS devices. A sticker button appears after an image has been uploaded into a new tweet draft. The stickers can be dragged, resized and rotated into desired positions on the image. Dragging to a dust bin icon deletes a sticker from the photo. Photos cannot be edited after tweeting them out, and re-tweets of existing images do not allow for addition or modification of the stickers.