The new version of Twitter was launched today, much to the excitement of social media geeks and addicts everywhere. However, as the process is a gradual roll-out, not everyone will be able to see the changes straight away, but according to Twitter these are the biggest changes they’ve made to the site since its launch way back in 2006. The changes to Twitter’s user interface are set to increase the amount of time social networkers spend on Twitter.com.
The changes to the site are fairly subtle, but all help create a more enjoyable and more interesting Twitter experience. They also shift Twitter’s focus from a place where users come just to share short messages, to one where users absorb interesting content, such as messages, photos, or videos. Twitter receives over 90 million tweets a day with 90% of the information being public and visible by all.
Significant changes to the site include a smaller ‘What’s Happening?’ box, to encourage people to explore the site rather than just tweet, and real names of users appearing in grey next to their Twitter handles. One of the biggest changes though is the addition of being able to share an entire set of Flickr pictures, with little thumbnails on the right hand side. Instead of sending users off to the external websites like Twitter’s users link to, Twitter.com now displays the linked multimedia content in a second column on twitter.com.
It is also suggested that a revamp of Twitter profiles has taken place, and they will now show stats on users’ average number of tweets, days on twitter, and @ replies. Also if you press the “?” key on your keyboard an overlay is brought up with all the different keyboard shortcuts you can use on twitter.com. This reveals that pressing the “.” button refreshes your twitter feed, saving you all that time refreshing the page. All in all these seem like exciting changes, but we shall see if the new Twitter interface pleases its Tweeters.
To learn about Twitter’s new features head to https://twitter.com/newtwitter.
