Announced in a brief
blog post yesterday, Twitter has updated its site with a fresh design that
fleshes out the kinds of actions users can take on their Followers or Following
pages.
The pages can now be
viewed in either “Expanded” or “List” mode. “List” is just that, a list of user
names alongside real names, whereas “Expanded” shows user location and latest
tweet.
In the new drop-down
menu (to the right of user names), users can choose from a few courses of
action. The most common options are “Mention” (which prepares a new tweet
mentioning whatever user), “Unfollow,” and “Block.” For mutual followers, users
can choose to send a “Direct Message.”
Though a simple user
interface upgrade, the new design shows us that Twitter is trying to grant its
users more capabilities and quicker courses of action, while keeping the site
as simple as the question, “What are you doing?”
The social media startup
might be able to learn a thing or two from Facebook, whose currently
feature-packed pages evolved from years of offering users various avenues to
personalization and privacy, all in an easy-to-use Web site. Drop-down menus on
Facebook’s site that enable users to remove certain stories from the news
feeds, for example, do not actually appear until the mouse rolls over the
story.
These kinds of design
innovations, simple in theory, add to the feel of a Web site tremendously in
the long run.
Though Twitter has been experiencing increasing spells of popularity over the past few months, Facebook has been building its massive user base for many years now. As these small aesthetic similarities reveal, in tandem with more significant software comparisons, the two sites may be competing for the same market in the very near future. These are, at the core, Web sites devoted to connecting people through the ordinary workings of their lives.
But that’s looking far ahead. For now, Twitter users will just enjoy the site’s efficient upgrade.
