Twitter is killing the egg profile picture

Twitter will no longer use the iconic "egg" profile picture for users who have not yet uploaded their own avatar, Fast Company reports. Starting Friday, Twitter is replacing all egg icons with the silhouette of a colorless, gender-less human, and all users who had previously been represented by an egg will be booted over to the new design.

Twitter has spent many long hours trying to figure out how to kill the egg. The colorful symbol "had become universal shorthand for Twitter's least desirable accounts: trolls (and bots) engaged in various forms of harassment and spam, created by people so eager to wreak anonymous havoc that they can’t be bothered to upload a portrait image," Fast Company writes. As a result, people who were simply slow to beef up their profiles would end up "using a troll's clothing in some ways," said Twitter's senior manager of product design, Bryan Haggerty.

Haggerty added: "The eggs were all these vibrant colors, and you didn't pick up that something was missing. When we put [the new image] in there, it really highlighted the absence: 'Oh, this person doesn't have a profile pic.' Or 'Oh, I probably should put my picture on here. I don't look like I'm actually on this platform.'"

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

While changing the default profile image might not end Twitter's harassment woes, it certainly marks the end of an era. Read more about Twitter harassment, especially as it is directed toward women, here at The Week.