Twitter is launching a new-look that it hopes will encourage more people to flock to the site – but the new, picture-heavy feel takes the site even further from its text-only roots, and it feel a lot more like Facebook. One of the major new features is a discovery tab that lets you tap into search results based on your personal interests.
There are also three other new navigation tabs – home, connect and me – along with a new Tweet button and a simplified way of embedding users’ photos and videos. The whole thing is served up in columns – again, like Facebook. Clicking the ‘me’ tab reveals a much more expansive profile page where your followers can Tweet directly to you and view your lists, favourites, followers and photos.
The ‘connect’ tab is where you drop in to see who has retweeted or favourited one of your Tweets. ‘Home’, meanwhile, is where you can read the Tweets from the people you have chosen to follow, just as it is with the old version.
The redesign, though, pulls the view, as with the profile page, right across the screen, which Twitter has probably done to make the most of the way pictures and videos can now be embedded into Tweets. If you do this a small ‘view photo’ or ‘view video’ link will be inserted that reveals the content below the Tweet when clicked. It essentially means everything can be seen at a glance.
