Twitter could be testing new features on the DL

Tech blogger discovers he has new Twitter tools and they look great

Technology blogger Patrick Bisch was one of the few Twitter users that was given some new Twitter capabilities that appear to be a small test by the microblogging system.

The Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the tech how-to site, Pinglio, noticed that his twitter handle was slightly different and had increased capabilities that could be the sign of a Twitter-wide upgrade including the ability to see media in the timeline feed and see the activity that given tweets have received site-wide.

Twitter has not publicly responded to the limited changes but Bisch has documented the promising updates and I, for one, am excited. And while we don't know that Twitter is going to change the appearance and usability to the way that @patbisch is now interacting with his twitter page, for clarification purposes I will refer to what he is seeing as "the new way" -- maybe if I say it, it will become true.

What is @patbisch seeing?

When he is in his timeline and hovers over a tweet, the retweet, favorite, reply options are appearing on the top right of the tweet rather than along the bottom like most people are familiar with.

THE OLD WAY

THE NEW WAY

Also clicking on a particular profile will offer a pop-up window with all the user info and recent tweets -- traditionally, clicking on a profile in your timeline will result in a window popping out to the right column.

THE OLD WAY

THE NEW WAY

These, so far seem like minor tweaks to the user experience that I find cleaner but the real fun stuff is the inline changes.

Conversations

I for one have always found that Twitter could use a better way to see a thread conversation between two users about a particular tweet. At this point I have to go to my @ mentions and click on what tweet a user is referring to, and each tweet seems disjointed. Bisch is seeing something very exciting. If someone has replied to your tweet, you can see the whole thread by clicking on the original tweet. This is not only a great organizational tool but also a great way to screen-capture and archive a conversation with someone. It is unknown yet if this organization translates to more than two handles in a conversation, but it is very promising.

THE OLD WAY

THE NEW WAY

In-line media

Another great addition that Bisch is seeing in the ability to click on a tweet with media and it will expand within the timeline rather than open in a separate tab or parallel window. This solves several problems that I find with the insertion of media: 

1. That you end up with a million tabs of content that I wait to load before looking at and then forget what tweet it correspond to.

2. Because of link shorteners, I often don't know if it is a picture, video, song or something else until I am directed to another page.

3. The media doesn't just take up all your inline timeline since you click to expand -- saves space but keeps everything in one place.

4. It makes it easier to consume the media and then retweet, reply or otherwise interact with it.

THE OLD WAY

 

THE NEW WAY

Retweet

If you click on a tweet and it has gained a lot of traction on the retweet circuit, it will show you how many times the microblog has been retweeted and by what users. This is something that often is only known if you click on the tweet and a side window (which is much larger than necessary) appears with tweet data. This is, like the other updates, cleaner and all inline expandable.

THE OLD WAY

THE NEW WAY 

Hopefully Twitter will see the buzz around these new changes and change the system or allow people to opt-in because I will be on board for streamlined updates. Hear that Twitter? @KrystalPeak is happy to try some of your updates.

 

 

Image Sources -- Livingyacht.com and Pinglio.com