By Alexandra Reid
Twitter recently rolled out a number of new updates that will make the social channel more user and business friendly.
Twitter’s web-based client is now more intuitive and informative for personal users and businesses, as its features have been streamlined into five simple categories: home, @connect, #discover, me and tweet. It has also (finally) rolled out brand pages, which will allow businesses to break out of the confined backgrounds and bios previously offered by Twitter and tailor pages to reflect their visual branding with more enhanced features.
Here is a quick summary of Twitter’s updates:
Home
As always, home is where you view tweets from the people you have chosen to follow. While Twitter says the new home page layout will allow users to view updates faster and more easily, the updates are quite basic, in my opinion, simply reorganizing features such as “trends,” “who to follow” and “compose a tweet” to the left hand side of the page, allowing the home stream to stand on its own for better viewing.
What’s notable, however, is that photos, videos and conversations are now embedded directly in tweets, so users can simply expand media within the stream to see the whole story at a glance. One of the best updates to this feature is that its format is now consistent across computers, iPhones and Android mobile phones.
@Connect
Under this new tab, users will be able to more easily participate in Twitter conversations as they can view who is talking about and interacting with them and their tweets. The tab allows users to toggle between two views: “interactions” and “mentions.” Under interactions, users can view conversations, followers, retweets, favourites and who added them to lists. As always, mentions simply lists tweets containing @yourhandle.
#Discover
Twitter describes this feature as “simplicity meets serendipity” in that it lets users “tap into a stream of useful and entertaining information, customized just for you.” Results from this feature are tailored to your interests based on location, what you follow and what’s trending in the world. It’s nice to see that Twitter has officially adopted the hashtag feature here, which was originally created organically by its users.
Me
Personal profiles have been redesigned to put user interests front and center. Like the home page, I don’t see much difference here besides layout. Again, all user information tabs are organized on the left hand side, including tweets, followers, following, favourites, lists, direct messages and recent images, allowing all details of these tabs to be organized in one stream on the profile. A nice upgrade, however, is that photos and videos are now organized as a gallery.
Tweet
The new tweet button is incorporated throughout Twitter beyond the home page. New features have been rolled out slowly, so some of you may have already been using these features for some time. Users can upload photos to Twitter directly from a mobile phone or desktop, and link to videos, news stories and more directly within tweets. Friends can now be mentioned easily as the @ feature auto-completes the names of the people you follow. Location-based tagging allows users to add more real-world context to tweets. And as always, hashtags can be added before a relevant phrase so people can search trends or phrases more easily in results.
Embedded tweets
I credit Brian Solis for pointing me to this new feature. With embedded tweets, visitors to your website or blog can reply, retweet, favourite or follow without leaving your page. According to Solis, “Not only will visitors see the Tweet wherever it may be embedded, tweets become living pieces of interactive media wherever they’re placed.” Very cool.
Brand pages
These pages are intended to compete with Facebook and Google Plus, say numerous media reports. Indeed, Twitter’s new brand pages have the potential to be very successful, as Twitter already has a huge loyal user base of businesses eager to distinguish themselves from the masses and align their Twitter presence with visual branding displayed across their other social media brand pages. The only obstacle I’ve heard of is that Twitter brand pages are harder to program than the competition, as they won’t handle big blocks of HTML code, according to a CNET report.
Twitter brand pages are free of charge, and allow brands to customize user experience in a number of ways. Colouring, typeface and images are all customizable, including custom art headers that allow marketers to pin updates with pictures at the top of the Twitter stream. As Solis puts it, “Much in the same way Facebook offers landing tabs, Twitter can offer a similar experience that changes based on the priorities of the brand.”
How do you plan to take advantage of these new features both personally and professionally?
