
The New Failwhale: Twitter Homepage - tortilla
http://giantrobots.thoughtbot.com/2009/7/31/twitter-redesign-fail
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Mystalic
The author completely misses the point of the redesign. The point is to brand
Twitter AWAY from being a tool to update your friends and towards being the
world's cultural epicenter. There's a reason Twitter deliberately took away
the "you" and focused on the world. They're trying to convince the people who
don't think they have anything to say to join.

It's easy to not use Twitter because you have nothing to say. It's harder to
ignore Twitter if it's THE place to go for all of the world's events.

~~~
jacquesm
There is precious little news that I want to receive in real time, for me the
s/n ratio on twitter is simply too large.

Even the 'best' twitterers can't seem to control the urge to spout junk on a
fairly regular basis. Too much stream-of-consciousness for my taste. Better
filtering would go a long way towards making twitter more usable for the
general public.

~~~
eli
_shrug_

My colleague does a twitter search on his subway stop every morning. A bunch
of tweets complaining about crowded platforms means he takes a different
route. I like the redesign. It's about time they recongized that _using_ the
great twitter feed is more useful to _most_ people than personal
microblogging.

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grandalf
I like the new home page, but why don't I see it when I'm logged in?

It seems that someone might be confused by twitter since the search focus
disappears after you create an account.

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clemesha
He says this makes Twitter more confusing for new users, and I'd argue that is
becoming less important.

My Grandma knows about Twitter, which puts the total number of websites she
can list offhand to 2, the other site being Google.

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fyates
The search is absolutely useless without the status updates. I don't mind them
getting away from the status updates some but they cannot completely abandon
them.

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redorb
I like your popular tags better. Twitter went away from "tell us what your
doing" - to a more - "share what is happening anywhere in the world" - I think
they and everyone is tired of "Froot loops were great this morning, now in
I-40

~~~
feverishaaron
Still, the whole point of the service is to broadcast "you" to the world. That
is, what's happening around you, affecting you etc.

To that regard, I think this guy's redesign conveys that message better to
someone who has no idea what twitter is. People who already have a twitter
account will almost never see this page. Thus, it should be focused entirely
on acquiring new users.

~~~
jfornear
Like Mystalic said above, Twitter is purposely trying to get away from the
status updates.

~~~
feverishaaron
Then, what is Twitter without status updates? I don't see how they can "get
away from them". An Iranian at a rally is just as much "updating their status"
as they 35 year old who hasn't left their basement all day.

