Twitter HQ was abuzz this afternoon. The big announcement?
Well, we took a look at Twitter apps like Hootsuite, Nambu, Tweetdeck, Echofon, and the ocean of other desktop Twitter clients. Then, I said out loud, ‘Hmmmm…life would sure be great if these guys weren’t around! So, Twitter is coming out with a new redesign. Tweet your hearts out, you maniacs.”
Evan Williams
At least, that’s what I can remember. But don’t quote me on it.
Look ma! A 250% increase in mobile users!
It’s no surprise that Twitter’s fastest growing source of growth is from users on mobile devices. Boosted by its recent acquisition of the popular Tweetie mobile app, more people are jumping to their iPhones and Androids to tweet their 140-character hearts out.
Overall, however, the Twitter.com web interface still remains the biggest source of traffic.
Send the latest copy of Photoshop over to Twitter HQ ASAP!
Well, at least there’s one damn, good reason for changing your Twitter avatar immediately upon creating a new account. Aside from its cheesy symbolism of how it coincides with the “hatching” of the new Twitter.com website, the new avatars are really just pathetic. I’m guessing the guy who designed the iTunes 10 logo had something to do with this monstrosity.
Screw the mouse! I’m sticking with my keyboard!
This is a pretty nice feature in the new Twitter.com website: keyboard shortcuts. Now, you can retweet, favorite, reply to tweets using only keyboard inputs. Here’s a full run-down courtesy of Lifehacker:
Navigation:
- j/k to move between the next and previous tweets
- Enter to drill down into or close a selected tweet
- space to page down
- Shift+space to page up
- / to jump to the search box
- . to refresh and jump back to the top
Individual actions:
- f to favorite a tweet
- r to reply to a tweet
- t to retweet
- m to send a direct message
- n to compose a new tweet
- Escape to cancel a compose window, dismiss the help window
Mark Zuckerburg: “I’m totally suing you bastards for copying Facebook!”
The biggest announcement of the day is that the new Twitter website now incorporates multimedia into the stream. Now, whenever you whenever someone tweets out a Youtube video or a picture, you can open it up and view it in the stream.
Twitter: “Dude, we’re totally not a social network…yet.”
As Twitter continues to swallow up Twitter services like Tweetmeme and other web apps that make Twitter even greater, more people will start to wonder the same question: “Wait, is this another Facebook?”
So, much for my beautiful Twitter background design
If you pan your eyes downward to the screenshot below, you’ll notice that with the expanded sidebar, profile designs will largely become useless. Of course, if you have a massive 27” monitor, the issue will be irrelevant. Maybe, Twitter has something in store soon.
Retweet button is changed…I think
Upon tweeting this post after I hit the publish button, I noticed something a tad bit different with the shortened link. Instead of the t.co link, it contained the first couple of characters of the article followed by some trailing periods! Nice touch, Twitter! Now, I won’t ever be fooled into clicking shortened links from spam bots. I hope.
Hey, look! A new favicon!
What? You’re not excited about it as I am?
