Twitter is turning its text-messaging website into a multimedia showcase by adding a new pane that will make it easier for its 160 million users to check out photos and video.
The redesign unveiled Tuesday may compel people to linger on Twitter’s website for longer periods and come back more frequently, making it a more attractive advertising vehicle.
“We are still figuring out all the new possibilities,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in an interview.
The facelift, expected to roll out around the world in the next few days, splits the website into two panes. One is devoted to the 90 million messages, or “tweets,” posted on Twitter each day, and the other features the images contained within the text. Until now, most links to photos and video have been displayed on other websites or browser tabs.
The new look further underscores Twitter’s emergence as a major communications hub.
In the process, Twitter has evolved from a geeky hangout when it started four years ago to a worldwide phenomenon today.
People are mainly opening accounts now so they can follow the tweets from the friends, family, celebrities, media outlets and lawmakers that interest them. These spectators, or “lurkers,” tend to only publish their own thoughts or observations periodically.
Forrester Research analyst Augie Ray said he believes the growing audience of spectators is the main reasons that Twitter had to do something to make it easier to wade through the sea of content cascading through its website each day.
“Improving consumption of Twitter-based content is important not just for Twitter, but for interactive marketers as well,” Ray wrote in a Tuesday blog post.
Twitter didn’t even start allowing advertising within a limited number of tweets until five months ago. The privately held company, based in San Francisco, still gets most of its revenue from a series of data-sharing deals with Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and other companies.
Stone said Twitter still needs to work on its business model before pursuing an initial public offering of stock. That most likely will mean attracting more advertisers in a way that doesn’t disrupt the exchange of information and ideas on the service.
The split-screen approach of the redesigned website appears aimed at achieving that goal.
The website’s left pane will look familiar, featuring a timeline that chronologically stacks all the tweets from the people that accountholders chooses to follow.
The right panel appears to open up new real estate for content. It is being set up so users can click on individual tweets to look at embedded images and other information without having to navigate away from their home pages.
“It’s all about getting more out of Twitter in a lot less time,” Twitter CEO Evan Williams said Tuesday.
Twitter has reached agreements to display content from more than a dozen online photo and video sites, including Google-owned YouTube, Yahoo Inc.’s Flickr, GoJustin.TV, Twitgoo, TwitPic, TwitVid, Ustream, Vimeo, and yfrog.
Netflix Series “The Leopard” Spots Classic Italian Novel, Remakes It As A Sumptuous Period Drama
"The Leopard," a new Netflix series, takes the classic Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and transforms it into a sumptuous period piece showing the struggles of the aristocracy in 19th-century Sicily, during tumultuous social upheavals as their way of life is crumbling around them.
Tom Shankland, who directs four of the eight episodes, had the courage to attempt his own version of what is one of the most popular films in Italian history. The 1963 movie "The Leopard," directed by Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
One Italian critic said that it would be the equivalent of a director in the United States taking "Gone with the Wind" and turning it into a series, but Shankland wasn't the least bit intimidated.
He said that he didn't think of anything other than his own passion for the project, which grew out of his love of the book. His father was a university professor of Italian literature in England, and as a child, he loved the book and traveling to Sicily with his family.
The book tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, a tall, handsome, wealthy aristocrat who owns palaces and land across Sicily.
His comfortable world is shaken with the invasion of Sicily in 1860 by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was to overthrow the Bourbon king in Naples and bring about the Unification of Italy.
The prince's family leads an opulent life in their magnificent palaces with servants and peasants kowtowing to their every need. They spend their time at opulent banquets and lavish balls with their fellow aristocrats.
Shankland has made the series into a visual feast with tables heaped with food, elaborate gardens and sensuous costumes.... Read More