14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter has been focusing on the site lately a bit more than usual. The API still gets the lion's share of attention, but a couple of new and rather big features have been popping up Twitter.com for the past few months. The latest one isn't exactly a game-changer, but it's a welcome addition. Twitter, of all places, is an avenue for discovering people and the site now simplifies the process somewhat with so-called "hovercards," small pop-up overlays with profile information which show up when hovering the mouse over someone's name.
"Because many of you use twitter.com to read and write tweets, we've been spending some time focusing on ways to improve your experience on the site. Today, we're introducing a feature called Hovercards that will be a handy way to interact with the folks behind each tweet," Jenna Sampson, Twitter spokesperson wrote.
As Twitter explains, possibly the best use for the feature is when trying to get more info on a user one of your connections retweeted. "One way we've found these cards to be useful is to find out more about retweeted people and follow them right there. You can also see more information with an expanded view of the card."
Hovering the mouse over a user name or avatar will pop up a small card with more detailed information on the user, full name, location, even the last tweet in the expanded view. If you click on the more link, the card will hold pretty much all there is to know about the user, the number of tweets, followers, bio etc.
It's also possible to interact with the user inline by clicking the menu options which enable you to follow, block, even report the user or send a DM. As is usually the case, the feature isn't live for everyone just yet, but should be rolled out soon enough. The feature comes after two big launches on Twitter.com, the new retweet functionality and the Lists feature.