Twitter and Facebook have both been major influences on the social networking world. Facebook, which has been becoming a household name, made major changes to it’s platform earlier this year. With the introduction of the Facebook timeline, users are able to add more personal information and customize their profiles like never before. Since the timeline was well received, Twitter has adapted a similar format to their user’s profiles.
In the past, Twitter has adapted many successful Facebook features to its interface. The very concept of tweets is similar to that of the Facebook status. One of the most well-known features for Facebook is the ability to “like” statuses. Similar to the “like” ability, Twitter has the ability to “Re-Tweet” tweets that users enjoy or agree with.
Earlier this week, Twitter unveiled its new profile design, which features more personal user information and is very focused on larger photos. The layout still contains many of the Twitter exclusive necessities such as followers, lists, and a history of sent tweets.
The largest change to the layout is the “header” – a large picture surrounding the user’s picture. The concept is similar to the “cover” image introduced in Facebook’s timeline interface. The only difference is in the placing of the user image. On Facebook, the user image is placed in the left hand corner, slightly below the “cover” image, while the redesigned Twitter will feature the user image centered in the large background image.
The Twitter redesign will also have a heavier focus on image sharing. Posting pictures to Facebook is immensely popular, and the Facebook interface allows for photos to divided into sharable albums. While Twitter’s image sharing is not as common, the redesign will be showing recent photos slightly larger than the previous design. Services such as Twitpic will still be needed to upload new images, but many have speculated that Twitter will continue its emphasis on photos in a similar fashion.
The redesign also focuses on bringing a similar look to mobile devices. Facebook apps on most mobile devices look nearly the same as they do on the computer browser. The uniform design is proven to be user friendly, and a uniform look is important for Twitter to adopt. Previously, Twitter apps ranged in functionality, and the designs placed important links in unrecognizable spots. Being consistent across all four of the major platforms, iPhones, Androids, tablets, and web will all start to see the new design roll out.
The redesign will be an overall improvement from the previous Twitter design, and will no doubt follow the success of the Facebook timeline.
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