Twitter's microblogging service has been undergoing almost constant change for the last few years, but none more significant than what we're about to see in the Twitter.com redesign today (and over the coming days as the changes roll out).
For those of us with Apple iPads, some of the sliding windows and embedded information is somewhat familiar, but the introduction of photos and, more importantly, live video is more radical. As Twitter's "new Twitter" page says, it's a richer experience.
All the site interactivity, the photos and what could be lengthy videos will mean people literally spend far more time on Twitter.com. They'll be interacting with topic-driven content for longer periods of time.
That's important.
More time on a page means Twitter could deliver contextual, sponsored tweets into your feed while you view the video. Maybe you'll notice a few of them. Perhaps you'll click on one. As far as I know, this is not the stated goal of these major Twitter changes, but the ad strategy has to be on the minds of founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone.
As the announcements were made, many people I follow on Twitter and others I follow seemed largely pleased. They like inline photos and videos. Others worried that it makes the micro-blogging service more and more like Facebook, a social network service that's done much to encroach on Twitter's space.
Personally, I like to think of Twitter and Facebook separately. Facebook is still a more managed and contained environment where I communicate with friends and relatives. Twitter is my news feed (both in and out).
Photos and video in Twitter.com won't really change the experience for me. Having a non-stop scrolling feed is a nice change—something I more or less get with most of my other third-party apps, but I'm not sure that will drag me back to Twitter.com either.
However, when I step back and start to look at everything Twitter.com is offering, I begin to see the destination in a new light. Honestly, the reason I stopped using the site to manage my tweets is that the web page—and its core service-- was simply too limited. It is becoming more and more difficult to say that.
Twitter's recent changes and planned changes to its third-party API program seem to spell doom for all the third-party products that have sprung up. This is, I think , what Twitter wants and needs. Its open API turned out to be, potentially, one of the worst things Twitter ever did, primarily because they developed an API that lets people could build tools which make it possible to never, ever, visit Twitter.com.
Like much of what Twitter has done recently, these changes are a call back home and a concerted effort to shove that API genie back in the bottle.
For the first time, I think Twitter is ever-so-close to succeeding. Certainly for Twitter newbies they won't even know of these third-party outliers and the paltry functionality that was once Twitter.com. Likewise, for all those people joining on mobile devices (up by 250% by Twitter exec's own estimation) where they now find Twitter's expert native apps, Twitter's old, abysmal mobile site will be unknown to them.
Even Facebook users coming directly to Twitter.com for the very first will find an environment at once familiar and, in some ways, more powerful and manageable than Facebook.com. I'm beginning to think these people will stay on the domain, too.
By the way: Am I the only one who thinks that this richer Twitter.com is going to kill the Twitter background business?
For longtime Twitter users like me, certain "my way or the highway" issues on Twitter.com, like how Twitter handles retweeting, could keep me on services like TweetDeck indefinitely. For those that don't know, Twitter.com, lets you retweet a post with ease, but you can't manage the retweet before sending. I cherish adding my own spin and hate that Twitter wants to "clean up" its streams by over managing. Others on Twitter pointed out the lack of Reply flexibility (no Reply all) and the inability to schedule Tweets. But, again, most new Twitter users won't notice any of this. Naturally, many Twitter pros I asked on TweetDeck said they plan on sticking with the third-party app.
There are a lot of people not on Twitter yet and as the company builds out its strategy, it may be time to admit that Twitter's finally growing up, and, at the same time building what could become a real business, too.