Twitter's New Profile Page

Twitter has just rolled out a new profile interface.  Users can now preview the new look and have the chance to keep it permanently on their page.  The new design will certainly have benefits for Twitter because of some new features such as pinning a tweet, filtered tweets, and best tweets.

(image from Twitter)

The first thing to notice with the new design is how strikingly familiar it looks.  A small square profile picture in the top left under a large cover photo, with a list of content underneath.  Yes. This looks almost exactly like Facebook's profile pages.  Those familiar with both Facebook and Twitter will no doubt recognize the resemblance.  However, the biggest benefit this will have is for new users of Twitter.  Facebook has by far the most users on any of the social media platforms with over 1 billion users.  Twitter only has about 240 monthly active users.  As Twitter becomes more and more popular, having a recognizable interface will make new users feel more comfortable and experience an easier transition.  The large cover image will also help companies increase their visual marketing and branding in a big way.  This again can be done in the same way as on Facebook which allows a consistent look across social media.

Users now have the ability to pin a tweet to the top of their profile page.  This allows users or companies to proudly display a tweet that explains what they are all about.  This can be a popular tweet to show how much engagement goes on or maybe a funny tweet to gain a positive response right away that leads to more followers.  Either way, a message can be displayed right away that the user or company can choose.  This is helpful to get a message out and also helpful for users discovering others to see if they want to follow them or not.

Another interesting addition to the interface is the best tweets feature.  Twitter will automatically make tweets that have the most engagement display larger on the screen than those with lower engagement.  This way, the most popular tweets stand out right away.  From a user perspective, this makes finding trending and popular content very quick to find.  Previously, tweets on the profile were just a long list of tweets which sometimes looked boring or monotonous.  I find that the difference in size helps break that up and also points out popular content quickly to users.

The other new feature is filtered tweets on profile pages. This allows users to quickly filter between all tweets, tweets with photos/videos, or tweets and replies.  The best engagement with Twitter usually comes from displaying visual content, whether a photo or video.  By being able to filter this content, users can quickly find visually interesting content without having to scroll through the majority of tweets.  This also adds another visual dimension to the design that was not previously there.

The last small feature is being able to choose a theme color on your profile page. A user can edit his/her profile theme color to any hexadecimal color using a color chart.  This changes the color of hashtags, links, user names, and section of the profile you are looking at.  Again, this is an added touch of personalization as well as a nice added touch of color to the interface.

Overall I find that Twitter did a good job with the new design interface on the profile pages.  Although it is directly out of Facebook's page, the new design will have a lot of benefits for Twitter. The profile pages are now better designed, have new visual elements, will help new users adapt, and will allow content easier to sort through.