Twitter is done with its default ‘’ egg ’’ profile picture. The company is getting rid of the egg picture it has used since 2010 for users who-who don’t upload their own picture.
The egg, Twitter says was a playful was to reference how eggs hatch into birds that send all the Tweets you see on Twitter. This time round, however, Twitter says it is bringing a human silhouette as its default profile photo, which it says will encourage people to upload their own photos for more personal expression.
Part of the reason Twitter made this change is due to Twitter trolls. The company says it has noticed patterns of behavior with accounts that are created only to bully and harass others
‘’This has created an association between the default egg profile photo and negative behavior, which isn’t fair to people who are still new to Twitter and haven’t yet personalized their profile photo.’’ Twitter said in a blog post.
For the new default profile photo, Twitter says it decided that it wanted to use people’s existing expectations for default profile photos and how they serve as a temporary placeholder.
Twitter also wants to let you know that it put in a lot of effort to come up with this new default profile photo. ”We reviewed many variations of our figure, altering both the head and shoulders to feel more inclusive to all genders. When the shoulders were wider, the image felt overly masculine, so we decreased the width of the shoulders and adjusted the height of the figure.”
From this process, the company says it identified a set of traits the new default profile photo should have: Generic, Universal, Serious, Unbranded, Temporary and Inclusive. It further says
Twitter hopes this new update will make it easy for people to take time and personalize their accounts.
