Starting Tuesday, Twitter is making pictures and videos a more important part of its service in an effort to appeal more users and advertisers. The social network announced that users will now automatically see photos and Vine videos shared by those they follow as they go through their timelines.

"Starting today, timelines on Twitter will be more visual and more engaging: previews of Twitter photos and videos from Vine will be front and center in tweets," the company said. "To see more of the photo or play the video, just tap."

The move is part of Twitter's recent strategy to make the service more user-friendly as it readies to go public.

The modification should make the service a more appealing place for companies to advertise. Currently, companies often include links to picture advertisements in their tweets, but users only see the picture if they click to expand the tweet. Having pictures appear as they do on Facebook should entice more companies to be active on Twitter as well as pay for promoted tweets.

Twitter said the change will happen automatically to its website.