Twitter has unveiled its latest move to make the platform more appealing to new users, in the form of gif-style stickers that can be added to photos, customising the images and making them searchable.

The stickers will take the form of accessories, props and emojis that can be added to photos, and will include topical stickers as well as more generic emoji-style images for everyday use. The stickers themselves will be customisable to a certain degree, able to be resized and rotated within photos for optimum placement, and multiple stickers can be used on a single photo.

Once a photo with a sticker has been posted, it becomes searchable in what Twitter calls “a new, visual spin on the hashtag”. By tapping on the sticker within a tweet, users can explore a new timeline of people who have used the same sticker in their own photos.

The mobile-first feature will be rolled out internationally over the next few weeks on both Android and iOS, as well as in Twitters desktop browser version. Whether the new feature takes off or has the intended effect of boosting Twitters lagging audience growth will remain to be seen.

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