Twitter’s latest surprise change is square profile pictures for brands

Twitter is adding increasingly sophisticated ways to differentiate accounts with new square profile pictures with rounded corners for brands. The new type of profile picture started rolling out to the platform on Monday, and you’ve probably already seen them on your brand profile and in your feed.

What are these precipiceFor example, the new square profile picture looks like:

And here it is in the feed:

It looks like these square profile pictures are being applied to accounts with the gold verification badge. ready denotes official business account. The Verge’s e.g. official deals and transportation-focused accounts have a blue badge and still have a circular profile picture.

I should also note that the square profile pictures are actually the third day possible options. Most accounts have a standard round shape, brands are now square, and Twitter Blue subscribers have an NFT profile picture can be hexagonal.

But square avatars aren’t the only new identification tool Twitter is rolling out. It also introduces a new smaller box that sits next to the check mark on the profile and appears to show the connection of one account to another. (We are approaching Tumblr-level ridiculousness is here.)

I’ve seen examples of this on three accounts myself: @Twitter Supportas shown in the screenshot at the top of this post, Official TwitterVerified accountand @TwitterBlue. Hovering over the thumbnail profile picture doesn’t currently show any kind of indicator of what it is, unlike verification badges, which do). In case of Support, Verified and Blue accounts, if you click on the little box it will take you to the main Twitter account.