What I find most interesting about today's announcement is that Twitter is clearly trying to create a more enticing consumption environment, and in order to do so, they have followed the lead of Apple's Ping and Google Instant by offering new features that promote discovery. This is clearly a trend we should all continue to follow closely.
Beth Arvin
Fame Foundry
http://www.FameFoundry.com
Twitter took a lesson from Apple and Google with a news announcement today - summon the tech press to company HQ with a cryptic invitation, put up a funky logo on the screen (in this case, an egg) and put together a cutesy video to help explain the news better. The only thing it was missing was news worthy of such fanfare - and Steve Jobs or Eric Schmidt.
Twitter’s news? A revamped twitter.com home page.
No, really. That was it.
There was no news about some sort of big revenue plan, an acquisition or some technological breakthrough that would allow users to log into multiple accounts at the same time. Nope - just a revamped Web site.
In fairness, the new site is designed to be more user friendly. It’s a split screen site that allows users to get more information about the person who posted the tweet, the link in that tweet and an embedded view of the picture or video that’s linked.
I’m a daily consumer (and sender) of tweets but I can’t tell you the last time I actually went to the main home page to send or read a tweet. I’m very happy with my Tweetdeck experience and have no need to go back to the home page.
But Twitter is growing at a fast rate - CEO Evan Williams says there are 370,000 new sign-ups per day. In terms of the information on Twitter, 90 percent is public and 25 percent of all tweets contain a link. And, apparently, more than 75 percent of the active users use twitter.com, compared to other clients.
So there you have it. A new twitter.com home page for all of the rookies who don’t really know how to use twitter - and haven’t quite yet figured out how to use other clients to enrich their experiences.
