Last week, Twitter released an update that finally allows you to do more with retweets. Whereas before users only had the option to add plain text alongside a retweet, now Twitter users have the option to add photo, video and GIFs to a retweet. Although it seems like only a minor upgrade, this offers great potential for marketing through the site. The feature went live last week on iOS, Android and Twitter’s mobile site, though it’s still yet to be functional on desktop.

It’s common practice for Twitter users to retweet with a comment – so expanding the retweet system to include a wider range of media will surely result in an increase of non-text based content. This is much more favorable for businesses in regards to advertising opportunities. The upgrade has been demanded by Twitter users for a long time, and it seems Twitter has finally listened.

In addition to their new support for media, Twitter also added live streaming, live video from media partners and a new audio broadcasting feature not long ago. The platform is also working on making conversation threads more seamless and easy to follow, with a new application called ‘twttr’, the app has already been rolled out to the first group of beta testers.

Looking at these changes, it’s clear to see Twitter is attempting to evolve from its reputation as a text based social media platform, and develop into something with more focus on media and potential for engagement. This all could increase users’ time on Twitter, and as a result help to boost ad revenue.

The development team at Twitter stated that the updates to the retweet feature were incredibly time-consuming as they impacted several aspects of the website, such as the Twitter detail page, accessibility features and timelines. The company said such updates required collaboration across multiple teams and departments.

If you haven’t already, check out Twitter’s new retweet features. Simply tap the “retweet with comment” option and then select the image, video or GIF icon in the toolbar.

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