Twitter announced today
that the company is changing the default avatar for new accounts from
the infamous multicolored eggs to a new default profile photo that
depicted a gray, genderless image of a person with a vaguely
gumdrop-shaped head.
The change from the colorful eggs to the blander
silhouette is an intentional one by Twitter, which noted that the new
image is specifically meant to be less interesting and feel more like a
placeholder, in an effort to encourage users to customize their profiles
to a more unique image.
As detailed on the announcement post, the company went
through numerous iterations to reach a final result that met the goals
of an image that was “generic, universal, serious, unbranded, temporary,
and inclusive.” Rejected results include a variety of other vague head
shapes, a landscape, and a design that consisted solely of gray stripes.
Additionally, Twitter’s blog does acknowledge that in
recent years, the anonymous Twitter egg has become associated with
abusive and harassing behavior on the social network. And while
eliminating the egg is at least recognizing that there is problem,
changing the default image just puts a difference face on the issues of
abuse, as opposed to actually serving as a concrete step in solving
those problems. (Although in fairness, the company has also recently began to roll out more tools to help keep newly created accounts out of users timelines.)
We’ve reached out to Twitter for additional details on
the change, and will continue to update this post with any new
information.
The article was published on : theverge
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