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Tag: twitter.com

  • Twitter.com Is Now Useful to Those Who Don’t Use Twitter

    Twitter.com Is Now Useful to Those Who Don’t Use Twitter

    If you don’t “use” Twitter (and by that I mean tweet, retweet, favorite, and follow people) or had no intention of signing up, visiting Twitter.com served no purpose. Until now.

    Twitter.com is now useful for people who don’t really want to jump headfirst into the whole Twitter experience. Of course, Twitter hopes that its homepage redesign will lure new users – but even if you have no desire to join Twitter, you can still check out tweets from news outlets, comedians, athletes, musicians, actors, and more directly from the homepage. What used to simply feature a signup/sign-in box now offers categories for logged-out users to browse.

    “Every month, hundreds of millions of people come to Twitter to see what’s happening in the world. After all, it’s often the best place to turn to for information and commentary on live events and breaking news,” says Twitter. “People who log in get the full experience: they can browse the complete catalog of public Tweets, Tweet themselves or engage with Tweets they see. Today, we’re making a big change for the many millions of people who visit every month who don’t log in, but still want to know what’s happening.”

    Twitter.com now features a bunch of categories, which when clicked open curated timelines featuring popular users in said category. For instance, clicking on the “Celebrity chefs & personalities” box opens up a stream featuring tweets from the likes of Rachel Ray, Ted Allen, Emeril Lagasse, and Guy Fieri. Clicking on the “hip hop/rap artists” tab pulls up tweets from Nicki Minaj, Pharrell, Ice Cube, Pusha T, and more.

    Twitter.com currently sports 10 broad categories – news, sports, entertainment, technology, lifestyle, music, humor & novelty, arts & culture, fashion & style, and government & nonprofits. Each category has various sub-categories, for instance “celebrity news, TV shows and stars, and Video games & gamers” inside the Entertainment category.

    The new Twitter.com should be live for users in the US, and Twitter says it wants to expand it internationally over time.

  • Twitter Changes Its Font, Makes Other Updates

    Twitter has just announced a few changes to twitter.com, most notably a revert back to its old font after a brief stint trying out a new one.

    At the end of May, Twitter quietly changed the font on Twitter.com from the ubiquitous Helvetica Neue to Gotham. The change resulted in some backlash, as evidenced by many of the replies to this Twitter Support tweet.

    Apparently, the experiment didn’t pan out, so Twitter is going back to Helvetica for “speed and readability”:

    Twitter has also given users some new profile colors and added a prominent “tweet to” button on user profiles, making it easier to tweet directly at other users.

    While these changes will be met with little to no friction, Twitter is currently facing a mini backlash over its decision to start showing favorites and other activity in users’ timelines. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo moved to assuage any concerns by saying that Twitter will only show this ‘extra’ content when Twitter doesn’t have anything better to show.

  • Twitter Now Sending Out “Best-of” Emails

    Twitter Now Sending Out “Best-of” Emails

    Don’t have time to waste time on Twitter? Now you can keep up with all of the people you follow with a “best-of” weekly email from Twitter. The micro-blogging service will now be sending out weekly email digests that will feature a summary of your Twitter stream. Popular tweets by the people you are connected with on Twitter will be featured in the mailing, as will popular links to stories. You may have already received one of the unsolicited emails, as they began rolling out this afternoon.

    Othman Laraki, director of growth at Twitter, announced the new newsletter-type email with a post on the Twitter blog. He stated that the emails are designed similar to the “discover” tab for the recently updated iPhone and Android Twitter apps. Which of the people you follow shared a particular story will be displayed below each story, showing you who it was popular with. Also, you can see related tweets from the people you follow and tweets can be sent directly from the email.

    Note that not all of the tweets in the digest email will be from people you follow. Some will be tweets that were popularly retweeted by the people you follow.

    If you don’t enjoy this new Twitter feature (or are annoyed that Twitter didn’t ask your permission) there is a link at the bottom of the email that will allow you to unsubscribe. Alternatively, you can change the option in your notification settings directly on Twitter. I’ll let the emails come for a few weeks before I decide whether or not I enjoy them. Of course, if they begin putting ads into the emails, the entire feature is a no-go for me.

  • Twitter’s New Log-out Page Promotes Mobile Apps

    Wednesday, Twitter launched a brand new homepage for users before they log-in. The emphasis on the new homepage is to “follow your interests,” as Twitter wants to engage new users to be frequent, active users.  Twitter has now updated their log-out page to promote the use of Twitter on the go with mobile apps.

    When you log out of Twitter on your computer, you will now be greeted with a page asking you to “now go mobile.”  You will also be presented will different devices for which the Twitter mobile app is available.  Clicking on any of these options will take you to their respective app page at the iTunes Appstore, Android Market, etc.

    The new log out page also contains buttons that prompt “download now” and “Use via SMS.”  The latter redirects back to login, while the former asks users to enter their email address where they will be sent a link to download the proper app for their device.

    This new log-out page is reminiscent of when Facebook prompted users to go mobile after logging-out over a year ago.  That venture was extremely successful, as Ryan Spoon points out – Facebook iPhone usage shot up 20% in one week.

    A large amount of people still use Twitter.com to read and write tweets, meaning they are not tweeting as much on the go – a fact I’m sure Twitter would love to change.  This new log-out page could help Twitter in two important ways.  First, it simply promotes greater use of their service.  Although Twitter recently announced eclipsing the 200 million user mark, many have speculated that a significant amount of those users aren’t actually active.

    Second, it promotes the use of the official Twitter apps as opposed to third party apps that allow access to the service.  In March, Twitter made some changes to it’s API policy and issued a statement telling developers to steer clear of trying to mimic the official Twitter mobile apps.  Major competition exists for how users access Twitter’s core functions, as some research has put the percent of tweets coming from non-official apps as high as 42%.

  • Twitter.com Users Get New Hovercards Feature

    Twitter has introduced a new feature for Twitter.com called Hovercards. These are simply little windows that pop up when you hover over any name on your timeline.

    It’s important to note that a lot of people use Twitter through different applications and never even see Twitter’s actual site. It is nice to see that Twitter recognizes that people do still use Twitter.com.

    Hovercards display information like name, profile pic, location, whether or not you follow them, verified user info, etc.

    Hovercard on Twitter

    "One way we’ve found these cards to be useful is to find out more about retweeted people and follow them right there. You can also see more information with an expanded view of the card," says Twitter’s @jennadawn. "Sending direct messages to people you follow will also be possible with Hovercards so you can interact with tweeters without having to move off the page."

    The feature is in the process of being rolled out in stages. Users may not have access to Hovercards just yet, but rest assured, they’re coming soon enough.
     

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