With Twitter's announcement this week that the social network is adding photo tagging and photo album options to its iOS and Android apps, it's clear we are seeing a trend toward more visual content within this medium as users now appear more interested in seeing information rather than reading about it.
As social sites like Instagram, Vine and Pinterest continue to gain ground in this space and the population's attention span continues to shorten, it appears as though the social media sphere is seeing a steady change to becoming a communication tool that is borrowing the old phrase "seeing is believing."
The rise of what is being referred to as "visual web" has already turned Pinterest and Tumblr into the fastest growing social networks on the planet as the two relative newcomers saw 88% and 74% growth rates in 2013 - staggering numbers for sure.
Toss into the mix that uploading photos has become the most popular activity on Facebook surpassing messaging with friends one-on-one and clicking the "like" button.
"The main appeal of visual content is its ability to communicate complex messages very quickly," explained Richard Eaves on his SteamFeed blog on the topic. "This is extremely useful to digital marketers, who are forever trying to capture the notoriously short attention span of web users."
While the whole notion of visual content on the web is nothing new, we're seeing much more buzz about it of late as marketers are certainly beginning to catch on the appeal as Eaves mentioned.
In a latest interview Marcel Just, the Director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University, explained how the human brain simply wasn't built for processing the printed word.
"A lot of printed words are there to describe things that occur spatially. In many cases, a picture is worth a thousand words. Now we can generate these pictures and graphics and we can convey them to other people very easily," Just said. "I think it's inevitable that visual media are going to become more important in conveying ideas and not just about raging fires."
When you consider that "seeing is believing" is an idiom first recorded in 1639, it certainly stands to reason that Just is on to something as is the entire social media world.
