Within the last few hours the guys over at Twitter have rolled out a completely new design, we have just spent ten minutes trying it out and we have to say that on the whole we are impressed. We will quickly give you a run through of some of the major changes – most of which make the new homepage look like the latest version of the Twitter app which has recently hit Android.
The first thing you will notice is the a refined homepage, when logged in you will now see your number of tweets, followers and the people you are following in the upper left-hand side of the display, beneath this is a box which allows you to compose new tweets, when the cursor goes in this box it expands so that you can see all 140 characters and a add location and an image to your tweet (see below).
Underneath the ‘Compose new Tweet…’ box you now see the ‘Who to follow’ box, here you see three recommendations and you can simply follow these people with one click, or remove them from your ‘Who to follow’ list by clicking the ‘x’ symbol, alternatively you can click ‘View All’ to see all recommendations or click ‘Refresh’ to see three different Twitter users who you may want to follow.
The final thing to see on the left-hand column is the trends section, you can choose your preferred trend location (most use Worldwide) and see a list of the top 10 current trends, all of which can be clicked on to take you to a search page for that particular trend, you can see the entire left-hand column of the new Twitter layout below.
Your stream now shows on the right hand side and looks a lot like it always has, the only difference is when you click on a tweet, instead of now showing details on the right hand side the tweet expands a little and allows you to quickly see who has retweeted that particular tweet.
If you click on someone’s name or profile picture it now shows a popup-like window where you see the Twitter user’s name, user name, bio, a larger version of their profile pic and their three most recent tweets. There are also useful buttons and links allowing you to see more tweets, follow users and add them to lists.
What’s most noticeable is the new top bar which sits above both columns and stays at the top of the page when you scroll down, there are three main buttons which from left to right read: ‘Home’, ‘@ Connect’ and ‘# Discover’. Also on the right you can use search or access a drop-down menu which allows you to see your direct messages, lists and settings. You can also access help, view keyboard shortcuts and log out. Finally there is a tweet button which when pressed shows a popup window allowing you to compose a tweet.
When you click on the ‘@ Connect’ button on the top bar you can see your interactions and mentions, if you click the ‘# Discover’ button you can find out more about all current trends and see a stream titled “stories”, this stream shows images, videos and blurbs of text from articles. We’re not too sure whether this is the same for everyone or perhaps an intelligent stream of stories to suit your interests. We will keep you posted when we find out more about this feature.
On the whole we like the new look but there is room for improvement, firstly we think that the ‘@ Connect’ button on the top bar should light up when you receive an @ mention, also we would like to see a ‘Direct Messages’ icon on the top bar which lights up when you receive a direct message.
Below you can see a screenshot which shows the new look – do you like the design? Interestingly we checked Twitter.com with another account and the new design didn’t show up, is it showing for you?
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