14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter is once again revamping the homepage in an effort to make it more appealing to new users and casual visitors, but also in order to better reflect what the site is all about. The new homepage will feature more dynamic content listing some of the more recent and important tweets and also a "Who's here" section that displays some major brands or other popular accounts. The search box is still placed front and center to encourage potential users to find out what Twitter has to offer.
"With the new design, we're intentionally featuring more dynamic content on the front page, revealing a sample of who's here, what folks are tweeting about, and the big topics that they're discussing. The homepage now features a set of algorithmically-selected top tweets that automatically appear every few seconds," Doug Bowman, creative director at Twitter, announced.
"It also highlights a random sampling of suggested sources; hover over any of them to see a profile summary and their latest tweet. Trending topics now scroll across the page, allowing us to present a large set of trends using little page real estate. Hovering over some of these trends will show a description explaining why the keyword is (or has recently been) popular," he explained.
The new homepage greets visitors of Twitter.com who aren't registered Twitter users or who aren't logged-in at the moment. The idea is to pack as much of the Twitter experience as possible in the first page visitors see. In the "Who's here" section, users might see a public figure that they already follow elsewhere or a brand they like, which might persuade them to join.
With the recent tweets and the trending topics, users get to see what's the latest action on Twitter, which usually coincides with the newest, big event or news story making its way to the Internet. Twitter is still seeing plenty of mentions in the mainstream media and plenty of people have heard of it by now. But for the non-tech-savvy crowd, the site didn't do a great job at explaining what it was that you were supposed to do on Twitter. Hopefully, the new homepage will help.