Twitter has updated its in-app camera, and made it a lot more useful in the process. For starters, the new Twitter camera can be opened with a single swipe, making it quicker and easier to shoot photos and videos. And you can also broadcast live instantly.

Twitter is primarily a text-based social network. You condense your thoughts into 280 (formerly 140) characters, and tweet them out for the world to judge. And judge they will. However, the rise of Instagram and Snapchat has forced Twitter to evolve.

How to Use the New Twitter Camera

The new Twitter camera can be opened with a single swipe left. It's then ready and waiting for you to capture and share what's happening around you. Which is the very essence of Twitter regardless of whether it's presented in written form or a visual medium.

There are two options: Capture and Live. Capture allows you to take a photo (with a short press) or shoot a video (with a long press), while Live allows you to start broadcasting live. You can also turn the flash on or off, and switch cameras from front to back.

Once you have taken a photo or video, you can add a description, add a location, and then compose a tweet containing the media. Twitter will also suggest tags to add to make your photo or video more visible to the wider world. If that's something you desire.

To be clear, you can still add media not shot using the Twitter camera. When you're composing a tweet just hit the Images icon, which opens your Gallery. And from there you can select a folder, and browse through all of the media on your smartphone.

Twitter Experiments With New Features

Twitter's new camera is a vast improvement over the old one. It's quicker and easier to access, has more options available, and is designed to encourage you to use media as well as words. Which should help prevent your feed from being a boring wall of text.

The new camera is just the start of Twitter's plans to evolve and adapt the platform to better serve its users. To that end, Twitter has launched a new app called twttr, which is designed to be a testing ground for new features. And here's how to sign up to twttr.