Huh? Twitter just removed the option to use a background image

Part of using any social website is customizing the appearance of your account to your liking; now Twitter has bucked the trend and removed that option. As noted by TechCrunch, Twitter users are no longer able to adorn their profile with a custom background image.

It seems like something of a strange move, made all the more odd by the fact that Twitter has not made an announcement about the change. Firing up Twitter, users around the world will today find that their accounts look rather different. It's bright, white backgrounds all the way. So what on earth is going on?

Twitter has not made it remotely clear what the reason behind the decision is, but it is causing a lot of upset today. Speculation is rife that Twitter did not like the fact that colorful, busy, distracting background images would take people's eyes away from advertisements, but it's not clear if this is a contributing factor. Twitter has updated its help pages to indicate that background images will no longer be visible everywhere:

You can customize your design theme so that users who click to view your Tweet detail pages will see it. Other than your theme color, your design theme will not be visible on your profile or Home timeline.

It seems that the change is still taking time to roll out. As noted by TechCrunch, if you change your background image it will initially appear everywhere you would expect it to, but will gradually become limited to key pages.

In a statement Twitter said:

We’re removing background images from the home and notifications timelines on web for all users. Now, background images are only available where logged-in users will see them publicly (Tweet pages, list pages and collections pages). You can find help center content about customizing your design and where it’s visible on Twitter here.

Have you noticed the change in your account?

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