RIP Classic Twitter, Welcome New Twitter

Businesses Take Action With Twitter

After roughly a year of opt-in updates, Twitter has officially rolled out its new interface to all of its users. The move itself should hardly come as a surprise to anyone, though the new interface may take some getting used to for those who've held off on making the switch.

In a brief announcement on the company's own Twitter feed, a simple message announced: "New Twitter rollout: complete! All users now have the same Twitter.com experience & can access our latest features.

The new Twitter interface adds some complexity to the look and feel of the site, building tabs for mentions, retweets, searches, and lists above the main timeline, and featuring a more robust settings and search bar across the top of the window. More significantly, Twitter has partnered with a variety of third-party service providers to offer embedded photos and videos directly in the timeline, so users no longer need to click through to third-party sites to see pictures. The list of partner sites is formidable, including DailyBooth, DeviantART, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, TwitVid, USTREAM, Vimeo, yfrog, and YouTube. This should help ease the minds of some security-conscious IT pros who worry about users clicking phishing links in their Twitter feeds.

Another boon for security: Hovering over a shortened URL will now display the full URL automatically.

The right column takes on new, enhanced functionality, as well. When you click on a user's handle, the right column will fill up with that user's mini profile, showing you their bio, stats, and recent tweets. When you click on a tweet, the right column will show you details about users mentioned in the tweet.

Of course, many users may not even realize the new interface is now active on their accounts, since most active Twitter users employ some kind of third-party app for managing their feed. These users, as well as those who use Twitter primarily for business purposes, may want to take a look at the new Twitter for themselves, if only to see what's changed.

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