This past week, Twitter unveiled a trailer (video not available anymore) for the upcoming revamp of its home website and mobile apps with roll outs happening the next couple of weeks. It appears this is the most thorough revamp the microblogging company has done with a host of changes that will either enrage or satisfy users but mostly enrage (it always does, much like the gripping Facebookers). Among the changes and upgrades:
HOME
The Home page with the main feed is reorganized with an easier to read layout that will include seeing media (pics and video) under a tweet (currently, watch it in the side bar). Not much else to say other than it will take some time to get used to the re-designed layout, but we like it so far.
CONNECT
The area where you can see you mentioned and retweeted you. More revamped layout, blah blah…
DISCOVER
Twitter seems to have adopted quite a few algorithms for this upgraded section. According to Twitter, this section will help parse out news stories based on your interests, connections, location and shoe size and it will get smarter on selections the more you use Twitter. Hashtags and trending topics will be placed here.
ME
Your profile page made bigger and more graphic.
Wha wha happened…?
With an immense revamp on features, there are also casualties of redesign. Mashable states the following DOA features, at this time:
… on iPhone it appears users can no longer copy and paste from a tweet. Users no longer can translate tweets in other languages. Options to mail, repost, or save links to Instapaper appear to have been removed. And the redesign makes it less convenient to switch accounts.
An important difference on the Web interface: Profile names are now emphasized whereas the user’s “handle” was front and center before.
BRAND PAGES
Much like Google+ and Facebook, Twitter is going to allow companies to govern their own brand pages themselves. From therealtimereport.com:
… from a design standpoint, there’s a prominent header, with a leaderboard-like graphical bar underneath the “masthead” area that can be completely customized. If [companies] run a Promoted Tweet, that tweet will appear at the top of the brand page, right under the header area. If the Promoted Tweet includes a video or other embeddable media, it will be open when the user first opens the page.
At this time, there are about 20 companies that have these new brand pages. Our favorites follow:
