​Twitter ditches the egg avatar, opts for a human silhouette

It's time to bid farewell to Twitter's ubiquitous default profile image -- the egg.

The social media site decided it was time for an upgrade. Now, for those people who haven't uploaded profile photos, instead of seeing a white oval inside a bright colored square, you'll see a generic silhouette of a dark gray head and shoulders against a light gray background.

"It's time for something new -- something that encourages people to upload their own photos for more personal expression," Twitter wrote in a blog post.

Twitter's reasoning to ditch the egg is more than just changing its aesthetic. The company said that getting rid of the egg could also cut down on harassment, trolling and bullying, which takes place on the site by anonymous users.

"We've noticed patterns of behavior with accounts that are created only to harass others -- often they don't take the time to personalize their accounts," Twitter wrote in the blog post. "This has created an association between the default egg profile photo and negative behavior, which isn't fair to people who are still new to Twitter and haven't yet personalized their profile photo."

Instead of varied colorful eggs, Twitter said the new default profile image has these traits: generic, universal, serious, unbranded, temporary and inclusive.

Twitter has been tinkering with several of its features over the past few days. On Thursday it announced it was adding a little more room to its 140-character limit in reply tweets. On Wednesday Twitter said videos from Periscope could now play directly in Moments, which is the site's up-to-the-minute curated collection of tweets, videos and discussions.

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