Twitter redesign brings unified cross-platform experience

Twitter is rolling out a redesigned interface spanning both the mobile and desktop platforms, making it easier for users to share information, discover relevant content and connect with others.

Twitter introduces four new tabs.

Chief among the Twitter changes: Main pages that offer insight into how the microblogging service works, with an emphasis on the # and @ shorthand symbols. A new tab menu simplifies access to key features and functionality, including icons for Home, Connect, Discover, Me and Tweet. "Twitter should be usable by those who know the shortcuts and equally usable by those who don't," Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey said Thursday during a San Francisco media event.

The redesign also includes enhanced profile pages offering marketers greater control over their Twitter presence. In addition to new visual enhancements, brands can promote tweets to the top of the page's timeline, allowing companies to actively promote their most engaging and important content. In addition, new developer tools tout embeddable tweets and enhanced Tweet and Follow buttons.

Twitter is kicking off the overhaul with new versions of its mobile applications for Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone and Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android, as well as the mobile.twitter.com website. The desktop version--along with apps for other mobile platform--is in the pipeline.

Twitter now boasts more than 100 million active users, 55 percent of whom are active on mobile devices. According to the Pew Internet Center, 13 percent of adult Americans who go online are on Twitter--by comparison, more than 50 percent use rival social network Facebook.

For more:
- read this Twitter blog entry
- read this New York Times article

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