Twitter's evolution starts with a new homepage

In Twitter's efforts to make the microblogging service more welcoming to first-time users, a new homepage has been unveiled which focuses on search and trending topics.

"We have a lot of work to do when it comes to the quality of our search results and trend analysis but repositioning the product to focus more on discovery is an important first step in presenting Twitter to a wider audience of folks around the world who are eager to start engaging with new people, ideas, opinions, events, and sources of information," Co-founder Biz Stone said in the site's blog.

But the increased emphasis on searching and trends is not solely an attempt to make Twitter more friendly to new users. It is actually an evolutionary step for the service. Twitter started out as a Web 2.0 property, a social network based on status updates, but it has evolved into the key property in the evolving real-time Web.

"Together with those who use it every day, the service has taught us what it wants to be," Stone continued. "From features invented by users, to applications built on the platform, we're still discovering potential. Twitter has moved from simple social networking into a new kind of communication and a valuable source of timely information."