Twitter drops default egg profile image

For the past seven years people creating a Twitter account were given the egg profile image until they uploaded their own personalised one. The company said the egg was “a playful way to reference how eggs hatch into birds that send all the Tweets”.

However Twitter wants users to upload their own photos and hopes that the default profile photo will encourage them to do that.

It said it had also noticed that accounts created only to harass others were often not personalised and kept the ‘egg’ image. “This has created an association between the default egg profile photo and negative behaviour, which isn’t fair to people who are still new to Twitter and haven’t yet personalised their profile photo,” said the statement.

The new image was designed to be generic, universal, serious, unbranded, temporary and inclusive.