Twitter gets a new user interface

At a press conference in San Francisco Tuesday, popular microblogging site Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams announced the site will be rolling out a new user interface similar to the one used by the critically acclaimed Twitter iPad app.

Like the iPad app, the new Twitter interface is broken into two columns, the left will be the usual view of your feed, and the right hand side will contain detail overlays. For example, when users include links to photos, video or music, the linked content is embedded in Twitter.com, shown in the right hand column. According to the site's founders, one quarter of the 90 million tweets that are sent every day contain links, that's 22.5 million daily reasons for users to navigate away from Twitter. This move will keep users of the Web interface more stuck to the site.

Also, when you click on a tweet on the left hand column, a window with details shows @replies, maps of geotagged tweets, and other tweets from that user on the right. When you click on a username, instead of going directly to that user's profile, a mini profile shows up instead, including a digested bio and recent tweets.

The new user experience will be rolled out gradually, where some users will have access to it in "preview" mode, allowing them to switch back to the old interface if they choose. Eventually, however, all users will be switched over to the new version.