TWITTER has announced its biggest site redesign since the service launched in 2006.
The redesign spans Twitter’s website and iOS and Android apps and features a simplified design that makes it easier for new users to discover content and people.
The new Twitter is less intimidating for newbies and encourages all users to stick around on the site for longer than ever before (which is good news for Twitter and its advertisers). It also helps Twitter change its image from a site that is all about trending topics to a place where users can discover breaking news, find information and follow the topics that they love.
“We’ve simplified the design to make it easier than ever to follow what you care about, connect with others and discover something new,” announced Twitter in a December 8 blog post. You’ll see this new design both on Twitter.com and mobile phones, so that you’ll have a familiar experience any time, anywhere. We’ve also updated TweetDeck to be consistent with this new version.”
The new version of Twitter focuses on four key elements of the service: home, connect, discover and me. Each element now has its own tab on the site.
Home is where you will find tweets from the people you follow. Tweets are now found on the right-hand side of the page and photos, videos and conversations are embedded in the feed so you don’t have to navigate away from the home page to follow a conversation.
The “@ Connect” tab functions in the same way as the @mentions page did before the redesign. It lets you see who has followed you, favorited your tweets or mentioned your @username in a post.
The “# Discover” tab is a new, centralized and personalized place to stumble upon interesting users, see the latest trends and find topics that you want to follow.
