Twitter homepage design update - the old and the new

Twitter has a new homepage, but what are the motives behind the changes and what is the future for the social networking site?

Old and New

The first thing you notice about the new Twitter homepage design is the general friendliness of it. Gone are the sharp corners and compartmentalised, boxy feel- replaced by soft yet bold graphics; the clouds seem fluffier, the bird has grown wings and gained a smile and there isn’t a sharp corner to be seen! The mature colour scheme ensures that the integrity of the design has not been compromised.

The new homepage prominently features a search tool not seen at all on the original. This enables the new user to search directly for the stimulus tweet that enticed them to the site in the first place. Additionally, a large portion of the page is taken up by links to the most popular topics on Twitter by the minute, day and week; designed to draw new users into the twitter community. This is a far-cry from the original homepage, which required the user to sign up before navigating their way to a separate search page to find topics that interested them.

The new design is clearly aimed at those of us who are yet to embrace the world of twitter. The log-in function has been relegated to a small drop-down button at the top of the page, adding an extra click for regular users who don’t remain signed in between sessions.

Why the changes?

Although the new homepage design is much better than the old one, it seems that in their rush to publish the new design, Twitter has neglected to make the design changes across the board. As soon as you choose to sign up to Twitter and click on the nice shiny round-cornered button the old design is back, confusing the user with clashing colour schemes and a battle between the old, sharp graphics and the new soft ones. In fact, the only page that has changed on the whole site is the homepage on twitter.com. From a design point of view, this inconsistency is confusing for the user; it is almost like using two different websites. Is this then a huge oversight on the part of the creators or is it a tactical move, in order to avoid alienating the million-plus users who are already familiar with the site’s look?

Twitter’s founders say that the new homepage is designed to “Help people access Twitter in more relevant and useful ways upon first introduction”. Clearly then, the changes are aimed at enticing those who have not previously used Twitter and, as they put it have yet to be discover the “power of Twitter as a discovery engine for what is happening right now”. Through its homepage Twitter is attempting to draw in an audience who are for the most part familiar with what Twitter is, but who have yet to be convinced of the value it has to them.

The future for Twitter

With newspaper headlines regularly featuring the latest celebrity or sports personality to have provoked controversy via Twitter, it is obvious that the site will ultimately have evolved to exploit the media attention surrounding it; could this move be paving the way for potential commercial earnings? Like the social networking site Facebook before it, Twitter has outgrown its founders’ original expectations and it surely has enormous potential for targeted advertising. For how long will the founders be able to delay the inevitable?