A meme is born: How people are taking mixed media viral on Twitter

Twitter:  when Twitter releases a new feature into the wild, we don’t know exactly how people are going to use it.

Sure, we have an idea. Usually it’s a pretty good idea. But we can only ever give people what amounts to a new canvas to work with. They (and you) are the ones who ultimately get to decide what goes on it. That’s the beauty of a public conversation that’s open to everyone — it leaves plenty of room for surprises and creativity.

And there may be no better example of this than mixed media, a new feature that lets people mix and match up to 4 images, videos, and GIFs in a single Tweet.

A meme is (re)born

Almost immediately after we announced the global release of mixed media in early October, people on Twitter got to work creating things like side-by-side reactions using one photo and one video or four-panel memes composed of three images and either a video or a GIF.

To see this in action, look no further than (of all things) the revived “Pope Francis Holding Things” meme that dates all the way back to 2013.

Who saw that coming?