New Twitter, What’s All The Fuss About?
You can probably see from trending topics that everyone's talking about a little thing called "new Twitter". Announced in the early hours (UK time) new Twitter is an "easier, faster and richer experience". It's being rolled out over the coming weeks, and there's certainly a lot of hype:
Most people don't even have the new interface yet, but from all the buildup we're expecting something amazing.
What exactly does new Twitter offer? Well, according to the official page a new design splits the page in two, with your timeline on the left and loads of cool stuff on the right. This includes things like media content from YouTube, Flickr, Twitpic etc, and other surprise sites like Etsy and DeviantArt. In practical terms, you won't have to click off any more to view a picture or video someone's posted. This is great for quick browsing and keeps everything in one place – no more loading new tabs and getting distracted off the site.
New Twitter also makes it easier to follow conversations and find social information. If you click on a Tweet in your timeline, your right-hand column will show @replies and other information about the user. It's like bringing order from chaos – a really handy feature to keep track of different people and different social groups. From the official video it also looks like there's infinite scroll – to be honest clicking on "more" is pretty annoying, especially when it doesn't work half the time. People are getting used to infinite scroll now so I'm glad Twitter's got with the times on this.
For me these are all useful features, and I can't see that new Twitter will get much bad feedback. What criticism could there be…"It looks like Facebook" maybe? Personally, I follow so many people now that I lose track of who's who, which "group" they belong to, and why I followed them in the first place. By making conversations easier to track and bios easier to view, new Twitter should streamline my usage of the site. There may be a bit too much hype for what are pretty minor changes, but I’m certainly looking forward to getting my hands on it 
7 Comments
Chris
Who actually uses the site though?
Andy B - http://www.andrewblackburn.co.uk
@Chris – Perhaps if the site had better functionality and features then more people would use it? I’ll definitely give it a go when it launches, but will it replace Tweetdeck? We’ll see!
James
@Chris – 78% of “active” users, according to Twitter.
Mari - http://www.toptranslation.com
I like the new features and I can’t criticise them in and of themselves. But the split screen is only convenient on a big screen. So I don’t know how well those new features will translate to smartphones. And since using twitter on the go is so widespread I can see some criticism coming that way.
Becky - http://www.beckynaylor.co.uk
It will be interesting to have a play with the new twitter when it *finally* arrives across the UK. I don’t use the Twitter main site that much but thats probably down to the lack of features on the old twitter, so lets see what it has to offer.
Chris
@James Does “active” mean that they use the site quite often?
Easy Marketing - http://www.easy.nl
A lot of companies who uses Twitter uses it by website. I can imagine that these new features can really benefit them too.
regards,
Stijn Driessen