Today twitter unveiled some major upgrades to its popular microblogging platform. Alongside new looks, it delivers some new features as well. The recently acquired TweetDeck also got a facelift. Here’s what’s changed.
New twitter: webpage
First, let’s take a look at the new web page — it’s changed quite a bit.
All the content is now organized in 3 tabs:
- Home: this is your old friend, the twitter feed. The main change here is that media content is now visible directly on the tweet.
- Connect: mentions and replies live here.
- Discover: this is something like a search-on-steroids. Apart from the old friends — hashtags and trending topics — the new Stories feed will show you, well, stories based on your contacts and location.
There is a new, sleeker profile page as well to complete this web page overhaul. All-in-all, I think it’s easier to use than the previous UI. In order to activate the new twitter, you need to install either the iPhone or the Android app in your phone.
New twitter: iPhone app
The iPhone app follows the same layout, and has an extra “Me” tab, which is your profile. One will notice also that when you start a new tweet, the button now reads “Tweet” instead of “Send”.
It looks very elegant. The only problem I see now with twitter on iOS/Mac is that it lacks a read sync between the various devices (like Echofon has). When twitter fills that gap, it will be perfect.
iPad users will have to wait a bit. The new update is only for iPhone at the moment and the iPad app will look exactly the same as always.
I look forward to see this new cool interface and organization on the iPad as well.
Closing
Overall, I think the new look and features are very welcome. Twitter is now easier to use, more elegant and still one of the best social media tools out there.