SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA (BNO NEWS) -- The social networking website Twitter updated its mobile applications on Tuesday to give smartphone users the ability to share photos through private messages, a move that comes at a time when photo-sharing applications are becoming increasingly popular.

"For the first time, you can share and view photos via direct message (DM) on your mobile phone," said Jeremy Gordon, senior director of product engineering at Twitter. Users can also view the privately-shared photos on twitter.com, although the website does not yet allow users to send photos that way.

"We've also introduced a new tab in the [mobile] navigation bar that makes it easy to access DMs -- they're just one tap away from wherever you are on Twitter," Gordon explained. The updated mobile apps also allow users to swipe from their timeline to the 'Discover' and 'Activity' timelines.

'Twitter for iOS' also includes a new feature that allows users to receive in-app notifications when they receive a direct message or one of their tweets has been retweeted, marked as a favorite, or replied to. 'Twitter for Android' added the ability for users to turn on mobile notifications for specific users by tapping on a star on their profile.

The photo-sharing feature comes at a time when mobile applications that focus on visual content, such as Snapchat, are becoming increasingly popular. The social networking website, which says it has more than 232 million active users, already made timelines "more visual" in October when it added previews of Twitter photos and Vine videos.

(Copyright 2013 by BNO News B.V. All rights reserved. Info: [email protected].)

The word "private" is a bit of an oxymoron. NOTHING is private nowadays!