When Twitter first launched a few years ago, not many users knew what to do with it. It seems there were many tweets of the "Just ate lunch, about to sip my coffee" variety. People who got Twitter and had the time to devote to the microblogging service quickly started building followers, retweeting, and making the most of it. Everyone else was left tweeting about what they might have for dinner.

No more.

Now, with millions of users, and the question circulating of whether the company can actually make money from the service, Twitter has revamped its home page to give the uninitiated a clue. On Tuesday the company began testing this redesign intended to give users entry points into the world of tweeting.

"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," reads a Twitter Blog post. The intent, according to the blog, is to "bubble up more of the information flowing through Twitter."

Twitter says the new design revealed on Tuesday builds on interface changes the company started implementing last year to make search and trending topics more visible, again giving people convenient places to chime (or tweet) in. That redesign also let visitors who didn't have Twitter accounts see what was being discussed on the site.

Tuesday's redesign uses an algorithm to select top tweets every few seconds, and does a random sampling of members to help users decide who to follow. Trending topics scroll across the page, again giving users ideas of what to tweet about.

"All of our recent changes embrace the notion that Twitter is not just for status updates anymore. It's a network where information is exchanged and consumed at a rapid clip every second of the day," reads the blog post.

Okay, so the company is attempting to answer the question "What should I tweet about?" But another question still remains, can Twitter make money?

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed