Like it or not, Twitter is now getting closer to Facebook in its basic functions, and on Wednesday, the 140 character-based social media network announced some new changes that take it one more step towards being less like the Twitter you know, and more friendly for new users.

Twitter is rolling out changes in the way its photo sharing works, with a few other minor changes that may make a big difference in the way new users interact with the sometimes-inscrutable social networking service.

These changes are undoubtedly a result of the slow growth Twitter showed in its first post-IPO quarterly earnings report in early February. Since going public, Twitter has been under pressure to make its social network easier for first-time users to navigate, like how Facebook has basic "posting" and "commenting" actions.

In Twitter's first earnings conference call, CEO Dick Costolo admitted that the company had to do something with the network's user interface to draw and retain new people, telling investors, "There's a lot we can do to significantly improve the user experience... We believe the changes were making will lead to a much more satisfying user experience."

Satisfying for whom?

With Twitter's latest changes, it's a mixed bag. First, Twitter's update for its iOS app (later rolling out to the website and Android app) allows users to post up to four photos per tweet. And now you can tag people in the photos -- up to 10 per photo -- with either their full name or Twitter handle.

In its blog post describing the update, Twitter said users tagged in photos will receive a notification. You can turn off the tag notifications in settings, and there's an option to disable tagging as well: go to Settings on your Twitter.com home page, select the "security and privacy" tab, and click "do not allow anyone to tag me in photos" to opt out.

Of course, tagging people in photos has always been an option for users who know their way around Twitter -- all they did was @mention that person in the body of the tweet. But the tagging system bakes that function into Twitter's system, so tagging won't count against the 140-character limit.

This is one of the biggest alterations to the 140-character limit system, and, in that sense, a positive one. However, Twitter's continued efforts to emphasize photo and video sharing above other tweets -- which a recently leaked Google Plus-style Twitter homepage facelift that featured a "photos/videos" category lends even more evidence toward -- is something that fans of the original text-heavy Twitter will find annoying. Twitter began in SMS, after all.

But a different (much more slight, and still unofficial) change to Twitter has gained more negative attention from Twitter diehards: changing "retweet" to "share." The change has been spotted randomly in the Twitterverse, a sign that the company is at least experimenting with it, and though the function is exactly the same as before, it got some users upset.

As we previously mentioned, Twitter's IPO was inevitably going to bring changes to the social media network -- from the user interface to ads to possibly more restrictive rules on third-party apps - some of which could be painful to long-time Twitter users.

What's painful for this user, however, is still at the heart of Twitter. In your next update, can you please give us just a couple dozen more characters? 160 is a nice even number, too.