Well yesterday was a big day on Twitter, wasn't it? I don't know about you but I was glued to the live stream of the not-so top secret Twitter press conference at exactly 3:30 pm and watched closely for an hour and a half while @Ev and @Biz told us all about the new "bigger and better" Twitter.com. The founders outlined many of the recent achievements they have seen with the growth of their community and announced the release of a brand new interface for Twitter.com, which will be rolling out to all users over the new few weeks (it's important to note that currently only 1% of users have access to the redesign, that decision was not so well received.)
The new interface has a renewed focus on the user experience with in stream multi-media expansions, more search capabilities, and an all around sexier more fluid feeling. I went crazy yesterday playing with the new interface and wanted to share way too many screenshots and my thoughts on the new layout. I am excited to hear what you guys think all of these changes mean, so let's do this, shall we? What are the big changes to our beloved Twitter.com?
1. Redirect users back to THEIR WEBSITE – Whoa!
I have to admit I got a little fiesty yesterday when I saw my stream fill up with tweets that said things like "that is it?!" and "its just a new interface, what's the big deal?!" Twitter has over 160 million users, but as we all know many of those users use second party Twitter clients rather than the web interface itself. Ev noted yesterday at the conference that Twitter mobile users are up 250% year over year, which was the motivation for them to release their own mobile apps earlier this year. While this mobile surge has meant huge growth for the community it hasn't done as much for their on-site value. The announcement yesterday was important because it was their first real attempt to redirect those millions of users to a more compelling on-site experience. Whatever the long term goal is for Twitter.com the website, yesterday's announcement was a huge step toward a more united community of users. This.is.a.big.deal.folks.
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(The new Twitter.com... ohhh pretty!)
2. A whole lot more space for .... uhmmmm advertisements?
So now that we have refocused our attention and time back to Twitter.com what will they do with it? Well sell us things obviously. As you can see below there sure is a lot more space for Twitter to fill. You will notice the "Sponsored Tweets" and the "Who to Follow" elements are more prominent. In addition to that you will see some open areas (that look a lot like traditional ad space units) laced throughout the platform. In general I think its pretty clear that they used this UI redesign to give themselves more options for the up and coming advertising platform we keep hearing about.
(Notice all that space they get to play with!)
3. Focus on other tweets, searches…you know uhmmm NOT your tweet
During the press conference Ev mentioned specifically that Twitter is a unique community of users in that not everyone actually tweets. He noted plenty of people use it just to listen or research...very "search enginey" if you ask me (yes I just made that word up). The new design certainly focuses less on my actual tweet and more on the experience I am having as a Twitter user. You will see the "search box" was moved to top right, and has much more functionality than previously. I can see tweets with my searched word(s), "tweets with links" & that word, "tweets near me" with that word, and see profiles or people that include that searched word. This is a far better experience all around if you ask me, again compelling users to stay on Twitter.com rather than leave and search elsewhere. Smart move people, smart move.
(New search experience...man I love Pumpkin Spice lattes from Starbucks)
4. Media, media, media oh my!
This is probably the change you are hearing most about. The new platform has the ability to view pictures and video in stream, by expanding from the left column (your tweet stream) to the right column (now used more as an expanded view). In addition to seeing whatever multi media you clicked on you will also see people mentioned in the tweet you expanded, a brief history of that user's tweets, and the latest tweet that tweet may have been in response too. Uhmmm sound confusing? Basically the expanded view of any tweet is now much more of a comprehensive story of that tweet. No longer on the web client will you be clicking from profile to profile to read a full conversation and get context. This new layout has put the story of a tweet together for you in one place. It's smooth, trust me...you will like it!
(The new platform when you expand an image... Hi Matt!)
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(The new platform with expanded video...ohhh puppy!)
5. All sorts of other little things
- You are not losing your backgrounds (phew!). Atleast right now we still have them. Also you might want to revisit your right column profile color--it's bigger now.
- Direct messages are up in your navigation (quite seperate from the other functionality actually) and are much more streamlined in my opinion. You now click in and see the number of DM exchanges, and can expand to see them all clearly. I was happy to see this. However you no longer see a "number" which was the only way us web client users knew if we had a new DM (unless we got an email notification) so be careful not to miss those new DMs!
- The new platform still does not support multiple users, sorry folks!
- Retweets. I still don't really like them, so don't hate me when I say that I am stoked they made the ability to shut off retweets from someone so much easier! It's in there next to the option to get a user's tweets on your cell. Both options are right there and a simple click to change. Easy smeasy for sure.
- The new platform makes replying to multiple people challenging. No longer can you hit reply and aggregate user handles in one tweet, each "reply" click pulls up an individual tweet box. Ugh, yuck. I hope they change this soon.
(When you hit reply a box pops-up...still a bit buggy right now) - "Trends" have some serious face time. I think we will find a lot more focus as marketers on getting our topics on the "trend" list (organically or not maybe eventually purchased) as I can imagine this will be much like scoring first page Digg time...similar atleast. You can see they are now top right, whoa in your face!
- They are calling this a "preview" on the interface, and when you get it you will have a notification box where you must manually click into it. You can also (atleast right now, I guess its going away in a few weeks) chose to "leave the preview" and return to your old interface. I don't think you will want to, but to each their own ;)
That about sums up the big changes I am seeing. As for what it all means? I think this is a renewed focus on Twitter.com - the site not Twitter - the company. Both Evan and Biz alluded to lots of changes coming down the pipeline, and there is a clear energy of excitement in the stream. I don't know about you but I am certainly going to playing around more on the web interface both as a user and a marketer. I think we will have some interesting opportunities coming our way...uhmmm both as users and as marketers ;)
Looking for other insights?
Checked out @ev's stream from yesterday, he gave a play for play
Read the official blog post about it
Watch a video and learn more about it from Twitter
Awesome. Now how the piss am I supposed to Rick Roll people?
I'm sure your creativity will triumph ;)
Man I should have noted that under "limitations of the new UI." My bad. ;)
I just have my fingers crossed everyone continues to use a 3rd party app that doesnt give a video preview.
omg omg omg You got Streko to comment! My day is complete. (going back to not working again. :)
I love you guys but so not seeing this post as relevant to SEO, if I cared to learn about Twitter I visit mashable.
@Joanna not saying its a bad post, its well done and i love the critical views on the platform for marketing but I'd hoped to see more about how I could benefit from the new platform for links/seo/traffic
IMO to know how a tool we use also as a marketing platform for us and for our clients is something we need to know... and, let me tell you, Mashable is good but this post is better :).
Apart that, am I wrong assuming that Tweets (therefore Twitter) are becoming more and more relevant also for strinct SEO use? I talk about real time search, social/users signals...
SEO 2.0 isn't just about being #1 in Google. It's about driving relevant traffic to your website. The new media stream may lead to more opportunities to get your content in front of the eyes you want (to be seen!)
And Twitter search improvements? It's search based on social proof! You can use twitter to search for "widgets" and now filter to tweets with links- "I've been buying these widgets for years, my fav! https://sto.re/iluv"
It's all about the traffic- if you sell products and don't offer like/tweet buttons, better get those up ASAP!
Sandro & Gianluca- Thanks for your input as well. I think we all know that socially shared content is quickly becoming a prominent piece of the "SEO 2.0" puzzle ;) and that is exactly why such big changes to sites like Twitter.com are important for all of us marketers to keep up with. I think a lot of the changes to the new interface make the process of searching on-site far easier and almost promote using it as an engine rather than a secondary function. This is certainly not by accident, and in the future it is something us marketers need to understand better and capitalize on when & where we can.
I appreciate your comment for sure. I will keep that in mind for future post ideas.
Right now the relevant story came through in the launch of such big changes to a commonly used marketing tool/platform. With only 1% of 160 million users having access, and us being one of those it seemed like a smart idea to open up what we were seeing with our awesome community. I think I was focusing more on the transparency promise we try and uphold and may have overlooked more of the other elements you mentioned.
Thanks again for the feedback, we are always interested in hearing what our readers want to see more (and possibly less) of. :)
And this is from a person whose has Moz post on Twitter Scalability? :-)
Well I was wondering how twitter is going to make some money. I think they slowly preparing for advertising revenue. I wonder if they end up doing same thing as PPC or facebook ads.
IMHO the twitter is quite good for generating traffic. The traffic might as good as organic traffic. I would say people who are interested in tweets are probably interested in company and their products.
Haven't used the new Twitter yet as they haven't offered to me. But looking at the video it seems to work a lot like the new iPad app, which works very well indeed, especially the threaded conversation view.
Good post btw :)
I should have mentioned that too! A lot of people at the press conference were saying it has a lot of overlap with out the iPad app works :) You are spot on!
Interesting. Looks kind of awesome. But I think for the many the apps still offer too many features to come back. So @Streko I think you're safe for a wee bit longer. #rickroll Multiple account sign in for example is pretty critical for many people. I mean - I know not everyone runs 6 accounts *hangs head in shame* but many have at least more than one. I'm also hoping that in a near future release they add in at least basic analytics. Could be an interesting feature to many. Especially enterprise.
I would imagine they will iterate on those features moving forward. I think they needed to get people looking at Twitter.com as a viable option for tweet management and as a search engine before releasing features specific to one or two of their audience types. It is hard for us as marketers to remember that a huge portion of their member base really does only have one profile (gasp!) and they need to satisfy that crowd to keep growing in the mainstream audiences.
However, I think you make some valuable points Kristy as to why us marketers will still be using our 3rd party clients...atleast for now ;)
No I totally agree with you. I'd say the vast majority don't use it like we do. And it's smart that they don't focus on that group anyway. We've all been on it so long that if they did they'd still be using the o_0 default avatar and the public stream would be visible. :P That would never be a good thing. But I do think that it could be a potentially valuable feature to many - not just us marketing dorks!
Are they changing the name of the service to Spammer or SpewTube? Will they have a Spam whale? If Joanna takes the puppy on rainy days in Seattle, what's left for Kristy and Kate? This post and the thread raise so many questions...
More changes than I was expecting, appears more user friendly but I'll reserve judgement 'till I get to play with it. Thinking some peeps who put a lot of effort into their background images are going to be upset as the new design takes up more screen real estate.
Awesome post, I'm really excited about getting the new Twitter. I'm not sure what criteria are needed to have the new Twitter but from the looks of things, it's only people with a certain number of followers or a certain about of exposure in the Twittosphere.
I think individual profiles are soon going to be completely obsolete. Everything will be available from one screen and we won't be able to have those fancy, swirly backgrounds anymore.
Does anyone know of social media companies that allow multiple accounts in the Twitter and Facebook spaces to connect? The objective being to post content not just across one user's social media accounts, but across multiple user's social media accounts. For example, the Subway franchise would benefit from that capability, being able to post an offer from corporate across all Subway social media accounts at the local level.
PS - thanks for the Twitter update summary. I'm excited to check out the new features soon.
All this is great!
More space for ads, less spam, "promoted trends" pair it up with Twitter'c "location" tweets and it looks like Twitter will figure out some revenue generating techniques on a mess scale and going for it now.
Great post...thanks for sharing thoughts around the #newtwitter. As much as I use other clients to access twitter, and as challenging as core web "client" is, I always seemed to come back to it more than anything. So, I'm looking forward to this refresh...Now I just need to get it (still waiting)!
Hey Mike! I am the same way. I have played around on EasyTweets, TweetDeck, CoTweet and more, but I always returned to the web client for the most part. *home* I look forward to hearing what everyone else thinks of it!
Fantastic, relevant and informative post. I can't wait to take the new interface for a test drive, I'm certainly not one of those users that spend a lot of time on the current Twitter.com site, I'm a Hootsuite fan, so I'm hoping I'm swayed by the new features.
Social Media is becoming increasingly relevant to SEO. Just look at the amount of information Social Media delivers to the internet. Information is being indexed faster and social media sites are being crawled. Social media is going to be integral in the future of search.
Looking forward to more specific details on recommended background dimensions.
Thanks for the update. Now Twitter has a richer interface but will it be as useful as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and others? I wonder how the ads will affect those apps. Any insights?
I think there are a lot of questions around at what cost we received the bigger and better Twitter. How quickly will they integrate ads? How aggressive will they be? Those sorts of things they didn't even really touch on at the press event. They did however say these UI changes were meant to show off what they are capable of doing onsite. They are def looking at the search functionality and the mobile apps as crucial to the success and growth of their community. I personally think Twitter will do a great job at recapturing new users that aren't as familiar with 3rd party Twitter clients already, but I don't see myself switching off Tweetdeck quite yet ;)
Ultimately though the new interface appears to make "a tweet" more of a story of tweets, which all around is a good move. They want this to be a place you spend time--researching, connecting, conversing and not just a place to update your status. If that was the goal I believe the redesign certainly accomplished it.
I think it's nice to see that Twitter's interface is evolving and becoming more usable. But I think I'll stick to Hootsuite for a while longer.
Joanna, THANK YOU! I missed this and thought, "Oh, another nothing big announcement." Well, thanks to your pictoral summary, I'm back up to speed to what is really a big deal and improvement.
You are officially deemed "SEOmoz News Reporter."
Nice coverage!
Yeah I think its wierd they only opened it to 1% of users, it leaves a lot of questions to be answered. Normally we wouldn't post coverage like this necessarily, but since we had access and people had questions it seemed like a good fit for a post :) Glad you liked it!
Pretty exciting overall. I like the idea of making Twitter.com a better overall experience. Even for those uses 3rd party clients, this will raise the bar and promote a better experience for everyone!
I think that is an important point others might be overlooking. This is a definite redirection of internal resources at Twitter to focus on the users they currently have and make them happier with their experience. As community members we expect these sorts of upgrades, and I was surprised to see the initial backlash when they released them. I guess it's true a lot of people just dont like change, even if its ultimately for the best.
Funny to see me tweets to you in the snapshot :)... for sure, you wrote the post I was hoping you would have written.
I like how deeply you describe the features of the #newtwitter and they potential implication for the current users and the marketers.
One note about the places where you suppose advertisement can be inserted. I think that would be "safe" for Twitter to not over fill the empty space with ads (IMO it would go too much against what we are used too), especially it would be a wrong move to occupy the left free column, that is actually used quite a lot as a place where to put contact infos.
Finally, the strategy to recall users to the websites when they are actually spread between so many desktop's apps, is surely a need for Twitter in order to monetize the huge volume of users they have more and more everyday.
We will have to see how Twitter will deal the actually "friendly" relationships with developers, but if I was one of them I would concentrate in these fields:
Again, Joanna, great review.
Great post, is there anything we know about new dimensions for our backgrounds? Should we redesign/resize them now to have them ready to go?
What does it means to us, mozzers, if we read between the lines...
Except of the fact a big beard can be scary of course!
Usability is so important than TWITTER is implementing new ways of sharing information...
Since it.is.a.big.deal, what can we learn from it?
- Every WYSIWYG out of here should be able to embed youtube video!
- Dogs MAY talk, so be careful with what you say to them!
- Featured content is still actual, and can be used to put emphasis on some important areas of your website (as well as to earn some money, for those of us who are accomplished marketers)
- "Trends" has enormous power from an ergonomy point of view, and could be used to organize your content in different ways
Stay tuned with Dr. Pete to learn more about usability...
Oh also! Now next to twitter handles IN STREAM you can see the person's real name. That will certainly help companies, and people with vanity handles. That is something I should have mentioned above, I think it is a step toward making it more personal and again pushing their community to truly engage on-site.
Thanks for the update - I love the idea of the expanded view to see media. That's one reason I haven't used the actual website but I can see where that would influence more people to actually use twitter.com. Remember, SEOmoz blazed the trail first with their UI and design update earlier this month. Way to stay ahead Mozzers!
Ha! Yes you caught us! We knew Twitter was launching a new interface and wanted to beat them to the punch ;) #win!
its seems like they're playing it safe by only releasing to 1%. I mean, twitter has trouble handling tweets (thus the most well known application error message - the fail whale), how is their infrastructure going to handle images and video? What's bigger than a fail whale?
I didnt include this because I am not 100% sure on the degree of difference, but I did notice that the auto refresh is much less frequent, and there is no "refresh" button like we see in many of the clients we use that show us media instream. This may be a way of buffering the usage? Not so sure on that, but there is a significant different.
Future=related ...does that mean we're getting a puppy? #justwondering #prettyplease
Kristy I'm totally down for sharing a puppy with you. #puppyshare? Ill take him during the rainy season in Seattle, you can have him during the summer? ha
Yes Please! #puppyshare
I LOVE that idea :D How can we scale and monetize this model???? #puppshare
Love it Love it Love it!!!
Great recap of the new features.
Looking forward to those changes!
Very interesting about the new Twitter, thanks
exciting new development for Twitter's search and interface. Do you think that twitter and facebook will start taking a bigger slice of the search market?