Twitter tonight held a special event to give an early look at the new Twitter. The new page draws directly from the design of the iPad app and makes content show automatically in a second pane rather than popping out a new window. Photo hosts like Flickr, TwitPic and Yfrog, as well as video hosts like Ustream and YouTube, will have their content embedded in a format that's more helpful both to computers and to tablets like the iPad.
Profiles also get short expansions in the secondary pane, as do things related to a given update, such as map data when a location is attached. Frequent readers now have access to an "infinite" scroll that will load older updates on the spot rather than require a click to queue them up. Many of the categories that had controls on the right, such as @ replies and direct messages, have been moved to above the timeline to keep the sections clean.
The refreshed Twitter page is going live tonight as part of a small, controlled preview that should expand over several weeks until every user has the new page.
The refreshed Twitter page is going live tonight as part of a small, controlled preview that should expand over several weeks until every user has the new page.
