Like it or not, your Twitter profile layout will change and will look more like your Facebook Profile page. Personally I don’t mind changes once and a while to avoid boredom. It keeps us going 😉
Old versus New Twitter Profile Layout
Most important change is related to the size of all elements, meaning that everything became bigger: a bigger profile image and a header that’s now placed over the entire width of the page. If you were using a background image you might want to revise it once you switch to the new look & feel. The layout of the tweets also changed: your most popular tweets will be displayed bigger. So tweets that received replies, were retweeted or favourited will have a bigger font size than tweets without interaction.
Bye Bye Eggs 🙁
Though I strongly recommend to upload a profile image some people don’t. In the past when you didn’t set a profile image, you received an egg as avatar. A nice wink to Twitter’s birdie symbol. Now however you’ll get a silhouette avatar if you don’t upload a profile image.
Following goes Pinterest
When you click on “Following” on an old profile you get a list (left image below). On the new profile you’ll see that Twitter decided to become a bit more visual, and implemented a board per profile integrating the header, and a larger version of the profile image. The screenshot on the right of the new look & feel shows the people that I’m following. When you check however “Following” of someone else’s profile you’ll also see a button to immediate follow those Tweeps which is more userfriendly than before.
3 cool new features
The changes are not only layout related, there are also some new functionalities:
- Pinned Tweets:
Facebook might have stolen the hashtag from Twitter…well Twitter took revenge and implemented the possiblity to pin a tweet, which is very similar to Facebook’s functionality to pin a post. The only difference is that with Twitter you need to remember that you pinned something because the pinned tweet won’t automatically be unpinned after 7 days, which currently is the case for pinned Facebook posts.
- Best Tweets:
As mentioned higher in this blogpost popular tweets will be displayed bigger than tweets without interaction (see also last screenshot above on which the 2 first tweets are bigger since than the 3rd). - Filtered Tweets:
From now on you will be able to choose which timeline you want to see when you’re checking out someone’s profile: “tweets” versus “tweets containing photos or videos” versus “tweets & replies”.
Timingwise Twitter indicates that the roll-out of the new features will happen in the coming weeks. On my Personal Twitter Profile I received a notification today that I could have a peak at the new layout, and afterwards I could decide to already activate it which I of course did. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to show you the screenshots aboven, because my Professional Twitter account didn’t receive a notification yet 🙁
How about you: do you already have the new Twitter Profile layout? And if so, what are your first thoughts about it?