Have Search, Will Tweet: Twitter Gets a Facelift

A Few Changes Any User Will Love

Posted by David Berkowitz on 03.06.09 @ 12:15 PM

Twitter today is selectively rolling out a few redesign tweaks (why should Facebook Pages get all the redesign buzz?). There are a few Twitter changes any of its users will love:

Twitter adds a search box.

• A search box: Yes, you can search for anything -- not just people. What took Twitter years to do this? Heaven knows (or, Biz knows). But the days of opening up separate browser tabs for Twitter and Twitter Search may be coming to an end (and yes, it's very uncool to use a browser to tweet rather than TweetDeck or the iPhone -- sorry).
• Trends: View the top trends, hashtags or no hashtags, from the top navigation bar. You probably know what #watchmen refers to, but you can now easily dig deeper to find out why the heck people are talking about Toronto (reason: it's 175 years old; in other words, it's been waiting 75 freaking years for a shout-out from Willard Scott. Come on, Willard, show him some Smuckers love!).

  New features round out search results.

• Featured users: Alongside search results and trends, there are featured users. This will help the rich get richer. In some early tests, the followers of featured users range from 9,000 to well over 100,000. As if @bbcclick, @mashable and @jdickerson needed more followers. These users are manually selected, accompanied by shortened bios. Conceivably, this could be a future revenue stream for Twitter, with users paying to promote themselves, but there's no sign of that now.
• Nifty queries: Below trending topics on search results pages, you get some nifty queries. Why not.
• Bumped but not forgotten: The Profile and Settings links are no longer in the top navigation. Twitter users logged in will find those below their user name on their homepage.

~ ~ ~
David Berkowitz is director of emerging media for 360i. He blogs regularly at Inside the Marketer's Studio.

2 Comments

  By kempedmonds | Vancouver, BC March 6, 2009 12:48:23 pm:

Hey there,

Good article. Twitter did its selective rollout of these features nearly 3 weeks ago for specially selected 'beta testers'. The services are now being rolled out on a widespread basis.

Cheers

Permalink

  By nickkinports | Chicago, IL March 9, 2009 09:57:21 am:

Great but no replacement for Tweetdeck. Twitter.com has a long way to go before it gets to the point that I will use it regularly.

http://www.twitter.com/admaven

http://admaven.blogspot.com

Permalink

Comment:

Note: Comments submitted to AdAge.com are posted automatically and will include the user name with which you registered. Ad Age reserves the right to delete comments that are insulting or personal in nature. Comments may be used in the print edition at editorial discretion. Comments are restricted to 500 words or less.