Twitter to redesign its apps, aims to create more immersive experience
Twitter is no stranger to redesigns, having redesigned their service with the addition of header images just last year. But if AllThingsD’s Mike Isaac is right, the company is getting ready to produce a much larger, more cohesive update than ever before – and they’re focusing on mobile.
The new design, which Isaac claims will be “prettier, feel richer, and become far more visually immersive” than the current iteration of their mobile applications. There will be a heavy emphasis on the media aspect of Twitter, rather than the text aspect. Gone will be the days of having to click through tweets and links to access media, images and videos will appear inline right from the default stream.
Another big change is said to be the layout of the application, which has remained mostly the same since Twitter for iOS was called “Tweetie” prior to it becoming an official Twitter application. The four tabs on the bottom – Home, Connect, Discover, and Me – will be replaced by a much more gesture oriented interface. Want to check out your Connect stream? Swipe to the left. Want to check up on your user profile stats? Swipe to the right to get to the Me tab.
What’s more is Twitter’s likely upcoming emphasis on television. The company has in recent days been testing a new TV-only stream that will pick out and emphasize tweets related to conversation about the television. The benefit of this would be obvious, especially to those of us who live tweeted our reactions of AMC’s “Breaking Bad” – which has quickly become the television event of the summer – last night. Forget having to wade through irrelevant links and images when all you want to do is focus on what people are saying about their favorite shows, all you’ll have to do is swipe over to that Television stream.
Those who think this unlikely need only look at Twitter’s “what’s trending on television” box, which debuted to some members of Twitter for iOS on the service this summer. Twitter has obviously been setting the stage for such a revelation for quite some time now as the company has journeyed to transform from a simple 140 character microblogging service to media sharing empire in recent years.
Mike Isaac mentions that Twitter is waiting until some time after the release of Apple’s new iOS 7 operating system this Wednesday to announce the changes to their mobile client, suggesting that their newest iOS application may take heavily leverage the design and functionality inherent in iOS 7. If a slide shown by Apple at last week’s iPhone event is anything to go by, Twitter’s new iOS client will be adopting a new flatter, brighter client that looks absolutely at home with the iOS 7’s new user experience guidelines.