Micro-blogging giant Twitter gets a major facelift today both online and in the real world. Twitter has been quiet for a couple of months now while the whole Facebook vs. Google ruckus was going on. Little did we know, Twitter was busy cooking something to improve its usability and advertising platform. Yesterday, Twitter bigwigs Jack Dorsey and Dick Costolo made an announcement that Twitter sign-ups increased by 25% upon its integration with Apple's iOS 5. But The bigger announcement was Twitter much-anticipated release of branded Twitter pages and a redesigned UI.
We all know that Facebook has turned into a destination-location for businesses and customers. The social network is now a marketplace of sorts. However, due to its recent changes like the annoying Ticker and the privacy issues of Timeline pages, some users feels that Facebook is becoming more complicated to navigate. Twitter is known to be an excellent social platform in terms of CRM and social monitoring, but it also wants to put a premium on usablity which is why it's launching a simpler user interface to make it easy for current users as well as new sign-ups.
Branded Pages Signal The Age of Enhanced Social Advertising
The new branded pages augments its relationship with big brands and advertisers. According to Advertising Age, Twitter's Chief Revenue Officer Adam Bain has been talking to chief marketing officer and brand pages was the most requested feature. Twitter is launching the branded pages together with 21 brands and advertising partners that include: @Dell, @DisneyPixar, @JetBlue, @McDonalds, @subwayfreshbuzz, and @VerizonWireless among others.
Twitter's Blog announced that brands can "control the message visitors see when they first come to your profile page by promoting a tweet to the top of your page's timeline." With this in mind, branded pages are enabled to highlight their best content while making the approach more personal.
A marketer's Promoted Tweet will be shown in auto-expanded format so that visitors can view content like a photo or video from a particular tweet. Another new function that this new design has is that mentions and @ replies can now be separated. Companies can also customize their pages with header images, display their logo, and a more prominent tagline. Twitter's branded pages and Promoted Tweets are both free of charge to anyone whether it's McDonald's or your favorite coffee shop downtown.
A More Organized Look
Along with the launch of branded pages and a new redesigned UI, Twitter's making the interface more organized. A handful of useful functions will also make viewing tweets and improved interactivity possible. The addition of four areas will improve usability and enhance user experience:
1. Me - This is your personal space. Everything that's happening in your stream and what your followers are up can be seen here. The Twitterverse can now view you what you're tweeting, organizing lists, and content you've posted.
2.Home - Formerly the news feed. Tweets together with videos and pictures will be viewable on the right side. Twitter says that it will show a more updated timeline up to 500%.
3. Connect - Twitter makes it easier to find brands and individual accounts then connect instantly. @replies and mentions will be located here as well. This feature makes Twitter more social than ever.
4. Discover - The Discover tab looks promising. Twitter improves real-time and relevant data mining by using your preferences like who you follow and what you tweet to give you relevant content. Twitter has maximized its hashtag capabilities to serve you the content you need instead of searching it yourself.
What Twitter Missed Out
Ashton Kutcher might have spared another facepalm last month if Twitter had an edit option. Unlike Google+, Twitter doesn't enable editing content once you tweeted it, so users tend to delete an unwanted tweet instead. Aside from the edit button, users won't be able to translate tweets in other languages. On the bright side, Twitter augmented its APO to allow embedded tweets and is now more open to more platforms and apps.
What do you think of Twitter's new look? Will it entice more new users to sign up? Can it measure up to Facebook fan pages?
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