If you happen to use the micro-messaging news and social media platform Twitter, and spend as much time or more with its desktop website version that than one on your app and tablet, then you might have noticed some significant differences with the former at the start of this week. If one would look at the bigger buttons, the larger navigation icons and the feeling of bigger space on twitter.com then you have just seen their latest desktop refurbishing at work. In a way, it seems as if elements from the mobile app version have been transplanted to the website.
The Verge has it that Twitter has given a wide release to their new desktop design for the twitter.com platform website. Testers have gotten an advance taste of this renovation of the site for the past few months now, but pretty soon all Twitter users will be seeing the new desktop look on their browsers. It is inevitable too because the social media service is making this changeover mandatory, with no alternative option to switch back to the previous look with the small font size and more. If you are a mobile tweeter on the other hand, you are sure to feel right at home.
That is no idle boast either, as mobile users will see a familiar button, “Explore,” right with all the other navigation options on their new place to the left sidebar. According to Twitter, they have added Explore for desktop users to get them to add more live videos for example. The Home and Message buttons will switch one to their Twitter timeline or DMs, and the Notifications are as the name says. The Tweet button opens up the post entry portion, which no longer automatically appears at the top of the feed, something old Twitter veterans need getting used to.
On the right sidebar can be found the Trending section, with the trend topics arranged in a format akin to online news websites. For those who are wondering where Moments are, the tab has been excised from the new Twitter desktop. But there are new possibilities in its place. Being able to Bookmark tweets is new, and the “Sparkle” button switches your feed between reverse chronological and curated. Multiple account holders can now switch in between their pages without logging out once. Variable color schemes are also available if white already bores you. And thankfully Twitter retains its Dark Mode.
The Twitter user community tends to be finicky where changes are concerned; and reactions to this new form for the desktop website has them roughly split between approval and bile. For the micro-social network however, their user base will have to suck it up. This is how things are now.
Image courtesy of Tech Crunch
Morgan Magazine 