Twitterphiles hither and yon, gather and bear witness to the new Twitter.com. At a special event yesterday, Twitter unveiled a new iteration of its website, one with a focus on providing a more robust Twitter experience, among other things.
The first thing you’ll notice, in this screenshot provided by TheNextWeb, is the absolutely-goddamned-monstrous side pane, which… by the looks of it, doesn’t immediately provide any info that wasn’t already largely useless. I still still still don’t understand Trending Topics, and I’m a complete whore for Twitter. Maybe I’m doing it wrong. But either way, that sure is one hideous pane. I was previously excited about Twitter’s sense of design. Now I’m not so sure.
But it’s not entirely unfunctional, either. Clicking on a user in the main feed will provide a quick recent tweet history of that user, and, perhaps of paramount importance to the redesign, media, previously only available via a click-through link, can now be viewed in-line. There’s no way that’s not rad.
It’s more or less a solid fact that any Twitter app you can name is a better alternative to the Twitter.com. But though I, personally, think this design needs quite a bit of tweaking before it’s a solid replacement for the traditional Twitter experience, it’s definitely a step in the right direction for a company who would quite obviously like its patrons to spend a little more time on its website. Twitter has yet to make a profit, and those advertising dollars could prove useful.
Here’s hoping. If you’re not already using the new Twitter.com, you’ll probably see it in the next couple days. Let us know what you think!
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