Tweaking the tweeting

Wednesday 31 March 2010 | By Heidi Scott, Gosh! Media Copywriter

Microblogging site Twitter has unveiled a new-look homepage that's designed to be more inviting and user-friendly for new users and visitors unfamiliar with the site.

Users who are not logged in will see the new homepage, which features more dynamic content including 'top tweets' that automatically appear every few seconds, a 'see who's here' panel highlighting famous people and brands that use Twitter and trending topics that scroll across the page. Hovering over some of the trends will allow users to see descriptions explaining why the keywords are popular.

It appears that the new layout is not live for everyone yet but, if you haven't seen it, here's how it looks:

The new Twitter homepage

The redesign looks to be a major improvement on Twitter's overhaul last summer, which put a strong emphasis on trending topics but resulted in a homepage cluttered with hash symbols and Twitter memes, serving only to confuse those new to the social media game:

Twitter's old homepage

In a post on its blog on Tuesday, Twitter claims that last year's changes "brought the power of search.twitter.com to the homepage and let people explore the value of Twitter without an account".

Twitter goes on to describe its homepage as "a work-in-progress" and claims that this week's design change "bubbles up more of the information flowing through Twitter".

The blog post summarises the design tweaks by saying:

"All of our recent changes embrace the notion that Twitter is not just for status updates anymore. It's a network where information is exchanged and consumed at a rapid clip every second of the day. With so much being shared, we know that there's something of value for everyone. People who internalize the value of Twitter understand the power of this simple medium. But it hasn't been easy to make that value transparent or obvious for curious folks coming to Twitter for the first time."

Twitter says it will monitor the data on the new-look homepage, and its impact on other areas.

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