Four Things I Like About the New Twitter

The social media landscape is evolving at  a rapid rate. More types of content are being integrated – not unlike Universal Search of a few years ago – Twitter is being embedded in more networks (and blogs! see right column on this post 🙂 ), Google +/Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn are all adding or updating business pages – it’s crazy! and awesome!

But, this post is about the new Twitter – there are four things I really like about the updated design and new functionality:

1. The new bar at the top including @connect and #discover. The @connect shows everyone who has mentioned me in their tweets from latest to earliest. In reviewing this I realized that I neglected to respond to an email to Eric – sorry! The #discover tag gives you a quick view into the rapid happenings captured by Twitter. The immediacy of Twitter is still it’s biggest value.
2. Integration of videos and images into the main stream of tweets. This makes sharing and consuming the non-text much easier. Use #discover for SOPA and see the search results page for a great example – https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23SOPA
3. Embedded Tweets. You can now grab embed codes for your favorite tweets. This means that rather than taking screen shots of tweets and uploading images to blogs and websites, you can embed tweets so that users can interact directly from the site.
4. Brand Pages. Twitter is jumping on the business support train – finally! All major networks are starting to give businesses the tools to interact with current and future customers instead of relying on personal networks. These pages allow brands to add a customized banner to their Twitter profile page. This customization increases brand awareness and gives brands the ability to promote a particular phrase, image, or promotion/event. In addition, brands are able to pin tweets to the top of their pages, drawing attention to content that the brand feels is most relevant to its audience. Check out the Jet Blue page – https://twitter.com/#!/JetBlue

Social is more than a channel – it is a new way of communicating and interacting. I think this internet thing has some legs…