Twitter began implementing a new design recently that has a major impact both on the interface and functions of the platform. The new look shares sundry similarities with Facebook and focuses more on enhancing the overall user experience while making it easier to steer and sift through tweets.
The most noticeable area of the latest Twitter upgrade are the changes to profile and cover images. The new cover photo spans the entire header of the profile page and replaces the background image used in the previous version of Twitter. The look is very neat and offers users the ability to focus on a single image for their profile page. In addition, users profile images are bigger making it easier to see the tweep (Twitter User).
From a functional standpoint, Twitter has also introduced new functionality to improve the user experience by focusing on the most significant content. The three areas with the biggest functional bearing are:
- “Best Tweets”: This feature is fascinating because it will help profile visitors sort through the noise of Twitter profiles by highlighting the tweets that have generated the most engagement. Content with the maximum engagement will appear with larger text, making it easier for users to find and engage with.
- “Pinned Tweets”: I find this feature very rewarding for the everyone because it offers a lot of benefits for brands as well as individual users. This gives you the ability to “Pin” of feature one of your tweets at the top of your profile stream so visitors to your profile see it instantaneously.
- Filtered Tweets: This is another flattering feature that improves the overall user experience and makes it further user friendly. Twitter now gives visitors the option of choosing which timeline to view when checking out profiles. Users can select: a basic Twitter stream, a stream of only photos and videos, or tweets and replies.
- Lastly, the new follower & following list: Twitter has made the following/followers lists much more graphically positioned. You can now see who is following a profile and who they are followers of through an easy to understand graphical interface.
Latest Mobile Functionality
In addition to the upgrades made this week on Twitter.com, Twitter has also rolled out some noteworthy upgrades to their mobile interface for photo sharing. The new functionality has made the Twitter mobile client more dynamic for photos and includes:
- Support for tagging up to 10 people in a photo – without impacting the 140 character limit Through the mobile interface, you can now tag photos with up to 10 individuals and the best part is the number of individuals tagged in a photo does not impact the 140 character limit. Twitter’s blog offers the instructions below:
- Share Multiple Photos in a Single Tweet Twitter has implemented the ability to add multiple (up to four) photos to a single tweet. This feature automatically creates a collage that visitor can scroll through as they view the tweet. Below is an example showing the four photos and the lightbox that appears in the gallery.
What do you think about the new changes to twitter? Are you, or your brand, looking forward to them?
In my next post, we will talk about the “Top Tips for Brands Looking to Leverage the New Functionality”.
