Disclosure: We are a professional review site that receives compensation from the companies whose products we review. We test each product thoroughly and give high marks to only the very best. We are independently owned and the opinions expressed here are our own.
Are you ready for the new Twitter? Earlier this week Twitter announced that the starting Tuesday 14th, 2010 they are rolling out a new Twitter that would slowly be released over the next few weeks. And no, I am not one of the lucky few that get to test this out. But one I get my hands on it will give you review. But from what I found out about it looks good and its finally catching with some of the other micro blogging sites. But is it too late, or is Twitter only going to get better and more popular? We all just have to wait and see…
Personally, I am ready for a change. But I am a devoted Hootsuite user. So these changes do not affect me.
So What are the Changes That Makes Twitter “New”?
The Twitter Blog says Twitter has been completely re-engineered. They say it is faster and provides a richer environment.
When you are on the site, you will see the standard timeline as you have seen in the past, but now under each tweet, you have a lot more options available to use. Another cool feature is you can click on a Tweet and a details panes slides and reveals the content.
Changes:
- New Design – The timeline has been updated, details slide out pane added, and the view more Tweets is removed. It now just keeps scrolling!
- Media – You can now embed photos and videos into the timeline. What mean, is when you click on the link it opens in the new slide pane. Twitter has partnered with YouTube, DailyBooth, Flikr, deviantArt, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, Etsy, USTREAM, Vimeo, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, TwitVid, and yfrog.
- Related content – is provided on a sliding details pane.
- Mini profiles – Like with most Twitter clients, you can now click on the profile pictures and see many profile of the user that you can see account information including recent Tweets and bio. All this done with out leaving the time page!
Check out This video Twitter did about the new roll out. If you want to see the good part, skip ahead to about 1 minute into it. That’s where you see the entire great feature in use.
Final Thoughts
All these new features are sexy and very useful. But, its only useful for those that use Twitter from the Twitter.com website and are not using a Twitter client. For most, they will continue to use a client. Why, you ask? So far you still get just the timeline. You can not setup new columns with filters like you can with Hootsuite or TweetDeck.
For me, setting up columns, is key. I spend most of my Twitter time looking at certain columns and not just everyone I follow. Most Twitter users who depend the filters and columns, will have to stick with a client until Twitter learns this and implements this into their website.
So what are your thoughts? Are you already using the “New” Twitter? If so, let know what its like.
Embedding photo’s and videos inline your status updates.. Sounds awesome to me. I’m not a heavy twitter user, but these changes will make it a lot more appealing for me to check it out at least.
Agree with you Aaron. I’m using a couple of Twitter clients and the Twitter website and the embedding of rich media is really cool. You don’t have to browse away from Twitter or your app to see what media the people you follow posted.
Anton, I am the same way… I mostly use clients. But maybe with these changes things will be better for the website.
I think anyone who uses other social medias sites will start using Twitter more once they see these new features.
I kinda noticed a change in the logo, the wings are bigger too… I hope it doesnt make twitter a lot slower during the peak hours of tweeting.
I wonder about the speed as well. We will just have to see.
I’m very grateful to the many people who tweet my stuff. But I personally can’t stand Twitter, and yeah, that’s my fault: I’m long-winded as a blogger, even.
If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Tumblr. The whole microblogging thing is Stumbleupon with more glitz, but the content can be that much richer, a rarity elsewhere.
I am on Tumblr. Haven’t been on very long but I like it so far…
Hi James,
Great new features – but like you ( and the vast majority of others I guess) I’ll continue to mostly only check specific columns on HS rather using the twitter stream
Cheers
Will