Twitter Face-Lift Shows the World Is Going Mobile

Investing

Published: January 14, 2014 7:45 am

Twitter is getting a face-lift. And the new look of its website resembles the company’s mobile apps for iOS and Android. This is just one more reminder that the world of the old-school PC is dead, replaced by a world of mobile devices and Internet on the go.

In the Twitter redesign, users’ names, profile pictures and follow lists have been moved to the left. The compose box is now in line, rather than popping out in a separate window. However, there is an option to pop it out, if users prefer it that way. Some icons have been changed, but no new features were added.

Back in December, the mobile apps got their own upgrade to the way photos and direct messaging are handled.

The decision to make the website resemble the mobile apps may have been a no-brainer for Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR), because that is where its users are going. The company said that in the three months that ended last September, some 76% of Twitter’s 231.7 million average messages came from a mobile device, compared to 69% in the same time period in 2012.

Twitter had one of the most exuberant initial public offerings of last year, but more and more analysts and investors came to see the stock as overvalued by the end of the year. Now the share price is down more than 14% year to date. It may take more than a face-lift to change that. Twitter needs to come up with a way to please advertisers and to make a profit. Going where the users are may be a good start.

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