Twitter has just announced a small update to both its iOS and Android apps, although the iOS app benefits more from it.
Across both apps (as well and mobile.twitter.com), Twitter has tweaked their search function to provide more context for topical tweets. Back in February, Twitter finally allowed users to unearth old tweets within search. Before, users could only pull up tweets up to about a week old, but now they can find tweets from months and month ago. Today’s update puts a “top tweet” at the top of searches for popular topics. Twitter says that this is chosen based on “relevance and engagement.”
You can now view more tweets from around the time period of the top tweets (which is usually older) by tapping “view more from this time.”
Twitter has also made a couple more improvements to the iOS app. The biggest one has to do with adding tweet context to in-app web browsing.
“When you open a link from a Tweet in your timeline, you’ll see that Tweet displayed at the bottom of the app’s built-in web browser. This provides additional context to the page you’re viewing, and makes it easy for you to retweet, favorite or reply to the Tweet as you’re reading an article or watching a video. If you don’t want to see the Tweet, simply tap the page and the Tweet will slide away from view. By pulling up or down on the tray icon, the Tweet will appear or disappear from view,” says Twitter.
They’ve also improved the autocomplete feature in search, added support for traditional Chinese, and removed support for video uploading via Mobypicture, Vodpod and Posterous.