Comments on: Twitter Friday: Twitter Redesign – Did you Notice it?

By: Brent Friar

Brent Friar — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:21:00 +0000

Hey Tad, I agree that the page is cryptic, which is where Twitter dropped the ball. If you look closely, they do tell you what Twitter is about. But you have to dig for it, it’s not obvious as soon as you see the page. Who ever came up with the concept was on the right track, but the implementation was crappy. It wouldn’t be hard to make some minor changes to the page to make it work.

By: Tad Chef

Tad Chef — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:44:30 +0000

Hey Anthony, great blog you have. I just stumbled a post of yours. Thank you for the feedback.

Hey Brent, maybe it’s not horrible but from a marketing point of view it’s nonsense. You are right that now they acknowledged Twitter is not about “What are you doing?” anymore. They don’t tell new visitors what it is instead. It’s just a cryptic nerdy type of page now. This way they won’t see much homepage induced growth. Just followed you, I’m @onreact_com on Twitter.

By: Brent Friar

Brent Friar — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 17:25:01 +0000

I think Twitter missed the mark. I like the look, but they didn’t completely capitalize on the redesign. Twitter certainly has taken a different direction than originally intended, the “What are you doing?” meme no longer applies. They included the key elements that makes Twitter what it is, and if you know where to look they even explain what everything means, but they didn’t make it easy to find the explanations. Unless the new user knows to mouse over the tiny little clock icon, they might miss that those are real time trending topics. Same with the search field, the “See what people are saying about…” is there, but it’s small and easy to miss.

I don’t think current users care what the home page looks like really. You said it yourself, did anyone even notice? The home page is not for existing users other than to login. We’re not missing out on any new and exciting tools or features. In any case, most everyone had custom backgrounds so their twitter experience is what they make it. If Twitter redesigned the logged in pages and messed up everyone’s background alignment there would be a lot of upset people. There was no need to redesign the logged in pages at this point.

I don’t think it’s horrible, but they could have done a better job at unencrypting what everything means.

@bnrbranding

By: Anthony Hereld

Anthony Hereld — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 02:06:31 +0000

I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I made several of the same points on my own blog.

There’s an old saying: What you did to get me as a customer, you’ll have to work twice as hard to keep me as one.

What does this new homepage say about how Twitter feels about its longstanding members?