Twitter announces its first redesign

Twitter cofounders Biz Stone, right, and Evan Williams discuss changes to the social networking site at company headquarters in San Francisco. (Marcio Jose Sanchez, Associated Press / September 15, 2010)

Twitter Inc. has redesigned its website for the first time in its four-year history to draw more users and get them to stay longer as it competes for advertising dollars with Internet rivals Google Inc. and Facebook Inc.

The redesign, which will roll out to the website's 160 million users over the next several weeks, is intended to make the site easier and faster to use and to serve up more relevant content to users, executives said at a news conference at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters.

Company Chief Executive Evan Williams said that the changes would allow users to get "more out of Twitter in a lot less time."

As Twitter's popularity has spread since its 2006 introduction, the website has gotten a reputation for being difficult to use and for crashing too frequently. Twitter has been a victim of its own popularity — 370,000 new users sign up each day.

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Twitter has lagged in finding ways to boost revenue. It recently launched new advertising formats and ramped up its sales force. Executives hope the redesign, which will make ads easier to view, will help Twitter better compete with Google and Facebook for advertisers.

Users of the redesigned site will be able to see more information about the authors of Tweets — the Twitter messages that can be no more than 140 characters in length. Also, conversations between users will be able to be viewed, as will photos and videos referenced in updates.

One of the biggest changes to the Twitter site is that users will be able to see two panes instead of a single timeline of updates. They will be able to scroll through the timeline in the left pane without clicking back and forth to see more information about updates or their authors.

Twitter executives said deals had been crafted with 16 photo and video sites, including YouTube and Flickr, to have their visual content embedded on Twitter.com.

Flush with venture capital funding that valued the 250-employee company at $1 billion, top executives have been focusing their efforts on making the Twitter experience simpler and better.

Williams said he had spent much of his time over the last five months on the redesign. "This is a complete revamp," he said.

Twitter's audience growth in the United States has tapered off in the last year, but internationally has continued to grow at a rapid clip, ComScore Inc. analyst Andrew Lipsman said. Twitter also continues to show strong user engagement, Lipsman said.

Forrester Research social media analyst Augie Ray called the announcement a "significant evolution."

"The long-term effects could be substantial as Twitter focuses on powering growth by improving Twitter consumption," Ray said.