Twitter has updated its profile pages, with a new look that resembles its closest rival Facebook, as the newly-listed social network looks to boost user engagement and ad revenue.
The update, visible through the web version of Twitter, allows users to customise their profile pages with their best tweets, a larger profile photo and wide cover-image, mirroring the design update Facebook made to its profile pages in 2013.
In an blog post, Twitter designer David Bellona said: “Moment by moment, your Twitter profile shows the world who you are. Starting today, it will be even easier (and, we think, more fun) to express yourself through a new and improved web profile.”
The main feature changes include:
• Best tweets. Those that receive more engagement will appear bigger on your profile page
• Pinned tweets, the ability to pin a favourite tweet at the top of the page (which could be seen as similar to a Facebook status update)
• Filtered tweets, which allow you to select what kind of tweets you would like to see from a particular user: all tweets, tweets with photos, or tweets and replies. This change in particular gives a bit more control over what you can see from users.
To show how the new pages will look, the blog post shows a number of high-profile users with the new profile page, including Michelle Obama, rock group Weezer and actor Channing Tatum.
The changes come at a time when Twitter execs have expressed interest in making it easier for new users, in particular after the company reported a slowdown in usage in February, which resulted in stock price plunge. As well, Facebook still boasts four times as many users as Twitter, or 1.2 billion users to Twitter’s 240 million.
The update will be rolling out to existing users in the coming weeks.
Read the official blog announcement here