Twitter Drops Its Egg, The Unintended Avatar Of Harassment
Since 2010, the default avatar on Twitter has been an egg. The idea apparently was that a new user was like a gestating bird, soon to make its first tweet. It was designed to be playful and cute. But over time, Twitter's eggs came to symbolize something different: users who remain shadowy on purpose, to harass their fellow tweeters. Today, Twitter announced that it was doing away with the egg as its default avatar, opting instead for a nondescript person-shape figure. No more bright colors, either — the new avatar is all gray. In a blog post, the company gave three reasons for the change , which it seemed to list in order of least to most important. First, the company says, it has a new look as of last year, and it wants users' avatars to reflect the "diversity and expressiveness" of the platform. Second, it says, the egg was cute — too cute. The egg didn't inspire enough people to want to change their avatar. So Twitter is making the default avatar ..