Twitter apps for Android and iOS get photo tagging feature and more

Twitter on Wednesday added Facebook-style photo "tagging" and bumped up the number of images that iPhone users can share in a single post.

As many as 10 people in a single image can be "tagged" with names without eating into the 140-character limit to text messages posted at the service, Twitter software engineer Cesar Puerta said in a blog post.

"Tagging people in a picture makes conversations around photos fun and easy," Puerta said.

Twitter users tagged in pictures will get notifications. People can control notifications along with who can tag them in pictures, according to Puerta.

Facebook has long allowed people to tag friends in pictures posted at the social network.

The ability to send a collage of as many as four pictures in a single 'tweet' was also being rolled out, starting with iPhones and promised soon for mobile devices powered by Google-backed Android software.

Photo arrays in tweets will be viewable from any devices.

The new features are being built into the latest versions of Twitter's smartphone application for Android and iOS.

(Also see: Twitter rolls out video preview to its Android and iOS apps)

Twitter earlier this week started testing a new feature in its iOS app that allows users to check how many people saw their tweet.

If rolled out to the general public, this would be the first time Twitter would have provided such a feature, very reminiscent of 'likes' on Facebook. The number of people who viewed the tweet will be visible to all users underneath every post.

As of now, there is no word from the social giant of when the tweet view counts feature will be officially rolled out.

Of late, Twitter has been working on redesigning its looks and following that, the micro-blogging major rolled out a new video hosting platform that allowed Android and iOS users to see previews of shared videos in their feeds, previews which would be played with just one click.

Earlier, Twitter released a brand new 'your week in review' feature to users in the form of a weekly email newsletter. It was not clear if this was being rolled out to select users or to everyone, but one just landed in our inbox and it came with metrics.

Twitter on its eighth birthday rolled out a 'first tweet' tool that allowed users to discover the first tweet of any Twitter user.

(Also see: Twitter offers a way to find anyone's first tweet on its eighth birthday)

Written with inputs from AFP