Twitter’s iOS app gets searchable photo stickers

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Twitter-stickers
Twitter stickers in action!
Photo: Helen Prowse/Twitter

Sharing photos on Twitter is now a lot more entertaining thanks to funky photo stickers. Whether you’re posting pics of your graduation, a day at the beach, or a night on the town, you’ll find a stickers to suit — and they’re not just cosmetic.

Virtual stickers are big business for chat apps and social networks. Last year alone, messaging platform Line made a whopping ¥28.7 billion ($268 million) — about a quarter of its total revenue — from sticker packs alone.

It’s no wonder that you’ll now find stickers inside almost every social app, then. Twitter is late to the party, but it is making up for it by making its own stickers useful. Not only will they make your photos stand out, but they’re searchable!

“After you Tweet a photo with stickers on it, your photo becomes searchable in a new, visual spin on the hashtag,” Twitter explains. “Tapping on a sticker in a Tweet takes you to a new timeline, where you can see how people all over the world use that sticker in different ways.”

So, if you see a photo with the sunglasses sticker, tapping it will quickly serve up more pictures using the same graphic.

Twitter stickers will start rolling out today, but won’t reach all users for a few weeks. Twitter doesn’t mention paid sticker packs, but with so much money to be made, it seems inevitable that they will arrive at some point in the not-so-distant future.

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