Twitter to redesign website


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It has been a very interesting month for Internet giants. In the last 30 days, Facebook unveiled the geo-location game, Digg launched a new version of its site and Google launched its real-time Google Instant.

Now Twitter is joining the fray. Yesterday, the social and informational networking site unveiled its largest changes in years yesterday.

The new Twitter, which is currently only available to a handful of users – the actual site progressive over  the next few weeks –  splits the main page into two columns. The left column features the traditional Twitter feed, while the right offers an expanded look on tweets.

When a user clicks on a tweet, the tweeter’s profile, the tweet and any links show up in the right-hand column.

Although the actual Twitter website leads its competitors in terms of use, a large portion of users use third-party Twitter applications like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, often on mobile platforms such as iPhones. While Twitter launched a recent in-house mobile app, according to its data 78 percent of users access it through the web browser version.

This redesign looks to be an attempt to raise that number and to win over third-party users.

In a way, it seems like Twitter is trying to be the new Google: A giant app developer instead of an app used on various platforms. Eliminating third-party developers could be a bad move; the developers helped Twitter grow into the giant it is today.

If Twitter’s ultimate goal is to cut out those middlemen, then it might lose some innovative ideas.

Overall, the new Twitter looks to be a very effective update to the networking site. It retains both the basic look and simplicity of the past design, while still providing plenty of new features that offer a wider experience on the website.

It seems to be easy and intuitive to use, and it affectively turns Twitter into a one stop location for media, instead of simply being a home to links to other sites.