When Twitter launched a new version of its service last Thursday, I held my breath and braced for a possible letdown. But much to my relief, New Twitter offers many benefits to individuals and companies alike. Here are 6 of my top takeaways about the new service. How do you like New Twitter? Feel free to add your comments below.
- The home screen has had a major makeover! Now you can see whole stories at a glance, complete with embedded photos and video, and the familiar links to followers, following and trends appear in the lefthand sidebar.
- Bloggers, rejoice! Tweets are now embeddable so visitors can reply, retweet and favorite from wherever. Mashable has a great post about how to embed tweets on your own site.
- The Discover tab allows you to find new users to follow, and you can even browse categories, such as “technology” or “fashion”. A vast improvement on finding people by searching for username or hashtags, or using Twellow or other third-party services.
- The Connect (@) tab shows how you’re interacting with others, such as follows, mentions, retweets and favorites, all in one place.
- A new “Following” page allows users to view the Twitter streams of other accounts they follow. So you can see what others are discussing without viewing their individual profiles to determine whether you should follow. This feature is only live for some users at the moment, but soon it will be available to all.
- Companies, take note – Twitter is going to offer free Brand Pages. On a brand page, you can customize the look with a large logo and extended tagline, and promote tweets in the timeline on the page.
Want to know more? Reference Mashable’s 25 Tips and Tricks for Savvy Tweeters for more help on navigating the new interface and functionality.
