The New Twitter Finally Makes It Way to the Land of 10,000 Lakes

Yesterday was a big day for the tweeting masses here in Minnesota, because that's when the new version of Twitter was made available to many of us around the Twin Cities. That group of new Twitter tweeters includes some of us around the Axiom office, so I thought I'd give more of a hands-on review of the changes as a followup to my post earlier this month.

For those of you who haven't gotten the updated version of Twitter, here's Axiom's page:

The major change is the visual redesign to a two-panel layout, reflecting the look of the iPad Twitter app. Personally I really like this new look, but like any visual overhaul it will vary from person to person.

As you can see, the customized background (particularly the left sidebar) did get affected. However a little resizing of the background image should remedy that, but it should be noted that there is a noticeable effect.

From a user standpoint, there are several changes that make the Twitter experience much smoother:

• You don't need to leave your Twitter page to view pictures or other profiles, they just show up on the right panel.
• Interestingly, while Facebook moved their 'Messages' tab from the top of the page to the sidebar, Twitter moved their 'Messages' tab from the sidebar to the top of the page, separating it from the '@ replies' and 'Retweets' sections.
• My favorite change? A search box. It sounds simple, but finding people or tweets on Twitter is much easier with a box on the main page.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, this is mostly just a visual change. It shouldn't revolutionize the way we live our 140-character lives. However, I do like the changes overall and I think it should make the Twitter experience as a whole a little better.