Interested in the #NewNewTwitter? I was totally bummed by their “rolling out the redesigned Twitter over the next few weeks” and realization that it could be weeks before I could play with the desktop version. I have been following theirchangesforsometime. By chance I tried their trick of updating my mobile app and what do you know, within a few hours I got the #NewNewTwitter on my desktop.
Playing around with it a bit I found some things I really like and others that I’m not a fan of. I break them down below.
Timeline
Actually pretty clean and I love the inline conversation view. Not a fan of having to click three times to get photos to appear large though. It took me a minute to figure out that there is “Compose a new Tweet…” input on the left side right under my user information, I actually find this quicker.
@Connect
They did a great job taking the information overload of the “Activity” tab and bringing some sanity to it. I found that the “Activity” is now located in the #Discover area, not gone, just placed with the “not exactly related to me” stuff.
Conversations
Clicking on a tweet brings up the conversation inline. I like this because the three column sidebar before just wasn’t enough room, especially if you didn’t have a high resolution monitor. I wish it brought up the entire conversation though, not just the replied to and replied tweets.
Lists
Again the interface took another hit against lists. This time they tucked them away under the User icon -> Lists. At least this time you can get to them all on one page instead of only seeing half and having to click another link to get to the full list in the #NewTwitter interface.
List Timeline
I really like the list timeline because it acts like the regular timeline. But my biggest complaint is the lack of context around what you’re looking at. I feel like this page needs a header or breadcrumbs or something to identify the list. Maybe it’s just me but the top left of the page feels too much like a user profile.
Direct Messages
If you use DM’s at all you already know they took a huge UI hit in the mobile interface and now it is confirmed they are equally as hidden in the web interface. Hidden behind two clicks, Profile -> Direct Messages. As you can see from the shot below they don’t even get a full timeline view. It’s a shame.
DM Conversations
Clicking in to a DM conversation the window doesn’t expand and space is pretty limited. For me this just isn’t enough room, I would prefer if more of the conversation was in view or at least you could resize the window. The style of the conversation is very nice, just wish it wasn’t squeezed in a tiny window.
The Little Things
When focusing on the search box all your saves searches come up below. This is a nice change from the drop down menu in the older interface. It puts the search in the same context as the user’s action.
As you move through your timeline and click to view and open photos/videos/conversations the tweets start to space out. As soon as you open a tweet they offer a nice little “Close all open Tweets” button at the top of the page. Nice little big detail.
Final Thoughts
Don’t get me wrong, I really do like the direction Twitter is going with the increased emphasis on conversations but I just can’t get past their continued hate toward Lists and now Direct Messages. By trying to pull in new users to explore they are excluding the seasoned users, but I guess that is what the Tweetdeck redesign is for.
Do you have the #NewNewTwitter yet? If so, what do you think?
As a lot of you know, my dog Foxy has her own twitter account, it is a great way to extend her personality to the world. Twitter is a source for instant information, asking questions and giving feedback to others. Almost immediately upon creating Foxy’s Twitter account she was followed by a handful of other whippets and greyhounds. They have been a great resource of information; twitter connects her to a larger community that just isn’t available in our immediate area.
I wanted something similar for Cecilia. Thinking about the people who would be following her I knew a Twitter account would not work. Only a handful of our family have Twitter accounts and frankly the user experience of Twitter if you are not familiar with it is intimidating. Long term I want Cecilia to choose the social networks she would be interacting with. Who knows if Twitter will be around in 5-10 years and I didn’t want to put her social capital in to a service that could be gone at any moment.
I’m a huge fan of owning yourname.com, no matter what it should always be a destination to give public insights about yourself. For me, yourname.com is your resume, it is how the world sees you. Buying ceciliadenardis.com is the least I could do to give her an identity beyond our household.
I was reminded about this while listening to a talk by Clay Hebert at LessConf. The point he makes is when your child is graduating high school with a 4.0 and involved in three sports what is going to make him/her stand out? There will be thirty or forty other students graduating with the same credentials. Having a website where they can develop their writing skills, post about projects they worked on, and be able to explain to the world that what they are doing matters. There is no better way to know someone than exploring someones strengths than to see a history of them.
Using a domain as a single destination give us/her flexibility to what goes on it. Right now I choose to use Tumblr since it requires basically zero setup and is perfect for posting photos, this is what we plan to use it for until she can type. The other great thing about Tumblr is it allows people to subscribe how they want, via the dashboard, RSS or email. A side benefit is each post gets emailed from my email address (looks like I sent it personally) which allows family to reply directly to me. This may seem insignificant but in the past few weeks I have talked to and learned more about distant friends/family members than ever before. Twitter is a great tool but for this audience they just don’t understand it, talk to them about websites and email though and they know exactly what to do.
If you have a child I think the single best thing you can give them is theirname.com. It is cheap and has the potential to significantly help them in the future.
What tools are you using to document your child/children’s lives? Anything public? I would love to hear about what is and is not working for you.
Today I noticed some changes to the Twitter list UI. Upon viewing a profile I thought to myself, hmm, this looks cleaner. I then realized a button was missing, the list selection. Looking around I couldn’t find it anywhere. Clicking around I noticed they moved lists into the options menu, where I would normally go to Block or Spam a user.
This make logical sense especially if they are planning more features to go in this menu. But I have two problems with the change.
It adds another click and wait to add someone to a list
Previously that button was always associated with the negative actions for a user
Neither of these problems are earth shattering but it changes how I use twitter.com. I put every person I follow (and some I don’t) into a list. Some of my listsare overflowing and a change like this leads me to believe Twitter is moving away from lists. Over the course of design changes, originally you were to be able to access lists on the right column directly as links. Now they are hidden above the main stream and even then it doesn’t show you all your lists in one click.
Less and less emphasis on lists
Changes like this can make a large impact on how users interact with a service. Although Twitter isn’t publishing future plans things like this are great insight into what they think are important.
Lists show expertise and authority
For me, seeing what lists a user is on tells more about them then their bio, the number of followers, or even who we follow in common. Twitter lists are like crowd sourced tags for users. It’s an objective way to tell people what you are all about. The harder Twitter makes it to list people the less they will get used and harder it will be one less way to determine the “authority” of a user.
Looks like Twitter just updated their “following you” email format. I haven’t seen a reference to it on the Twitter Blog yet so it might be pushed out slowly. I have included screenshots of the old and new layouts above for comparison. A few things have been changing:
Informationally
The subject now includes the person’s twitter handle
Removed the “follows x users who follow you” (think this was a good removal, no value lost)
No more “What’s Next?” to explain how to send an @reply or DM (is this assumed now?)
Graphically
Much more in line with updated Twitter homepage and overall look
Not sure what that check box is doing up there in the top right (it is not clickable)
The tweets/following/followers placement is far easier to scan
The large blue “View @person’s profile” is hard to miss as a next step
Underlines have been removed from all links. The link and text colors are a little too close for my comfort, I wonder how #a11y experts think about the change.
Overall I think Twitter is moving in the right direction but still has a little ways to go. I would love to see the location added back in, links being underlined and the addition of how many lists the user is on. I think the number of lists is a great indication of the impact the twitter has in their community.
Something that has been severely lacking in the official Twitter desktop app has been “multi-window” or multiple view ability. I recently moved from the official app (which I loved because it utilizes stream) to Twitteriffic because it was much easier to follow lists and saved searches.
Open in New Window
The newest update to the Twitter desktop app has completely changed that. Although it is not perfect, you can now take any view and “Open in New Window”. This pops it out of the app into its own fully resizable and movable box. It’s not yet to the point of Nambu’s multi view updating and unread counts but it is a step in the right direction.
I am now totally back on board with the official Twitter app again. Thanks for paying attention guys!
