New Twitter web client is coming soon near you. Twitter threw unusual press event a couple of days ago at their San Francisco office unveiling it with YouTube pitch. And they are trying to reframe the public perception of Twitter as real-time news source. Let's take a few moments to highlight the major changes to Twitter web client, and see what they mean to you and me, Twitter users.
Twitter now has native support for photos and videos. It wasn't clear from bits of reviews and YouTube demo, but I would think uploading photos and videos from Twitter web client is supported. What's interesting is the degree to which Flickr and YouTube are integrated. As shown in the screenshot, not only Twitter displays picture included in the link, but also thumbnail of album to be scanned. For YouTube link, it's embedding YouTube video on the tweet.
2. Twitter web client as application
Unless I told you that screenshot is new Twitter web client, you might be thinking that it is new standalone desktop Twitter client, likes of TweetDeck. It offers shortcut keys to access frequently used features, has split view panes, and floating what's-happening window to allow you tweet without losing the context.
3. Easy author timeline and profile access
Another easy major feature is easy access to author's timeline and profile. No longer you have to follow a link to see author's tweet history and profile. Whenever you select a tweet, you can instantly see author's information expanded on right pane.
Now what does all these mean to you and me? As discussed earlier in this blog, Twitter can be thought of as stream of real-time filterable Post-It notes. I think Twitter is extending this paradigm further to become multimedia breaking news source. Kevin Thau in fact stirred up blogosphere with his assertion of Twitter not being social network but news source yesterday.
It's clear that Twitter is moving to become multimedia news medium where people come to find out breaking news. Tight integration with Flickr and YouTube will mean that everyone can use Twitter to be one-person news agency. Not only individual users but many brick-and-mortar companies can now use new Twitter client to send deliver headlines with full body of article to public. It's safe to say that you and I can expect more news to be broken on Twitter, now with pictures and videos.
Look out for surge of citizen reporters riding this new Twitter wave.
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