Improved Twitter released!

Twitter.com has gone through a lot of changes in efforts to improve its pull users away from third-party apps and integrate them into twitter.

Twitter changes seems to be targeted against Facebook, third-party apps, embedded pics and videos, threaded replies and tweet-drill-downs.

Twitter has also got a new design to mark its new beginning!

The New Twitter

The new homepage, which still has a distinctive Twitter feel about it, has quite a different look and a bunch of new features. While tweets  are still shown on the left of the page, there’s an expanded sidebar on the right with new features like maps of geo-location tagged tweets and embedded pictures and videos.

Users now can click on tweets to drill down into them for more information. And if a user replies to a tweet, it will show up under the original tweet, said Evan Williams, Twitter’s CEO and co-founder, to a roomful of press at the social networking company’s San Francisco offices on Tuesday.

“It’s about a faster, easier, richer experience — a better way to discover what’s in your world,” Williams said during the press conference. “We want people to get more out of it in less time.”

“This redesign could make [the site] more robust and able to survive competitive challenges,” said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group. “But Twitter was known for its simplicity and messing with that has its risks.”

If Twitter.com is suddenly more compelling and fun to use, will users still go to a third-party for their tweeting needs?

Maybe not, said Enderle. “This will allow users to do more in Twitter,” he noted. “And if this works, it will make third-party sites less popular, but only if this works.”

And what about Facebook, another extremely popular social networking site that is competing with Twitter for users’ time and attention? With embedded pictures and video, suddenly Twitter is moving into Facebook’s traditional territory.

“I think the realization is that [Twitter] could be a one-stop service for people who want a complete experience,” said Enderle. “Twitter is clearly targeting Facebook… but people are creatures of habit and it’s very difficult to move them from a service they like. Facebook is likely stickier than Twitter.”