Most brands have a presence on both Facebook and Twitter, but until Thursday, a brand's Twitter page was a place to push content to their followers' streams and respond to customer service requests. It was not a destination in itself, and there was no differentiation between brand accounts and user accounts.
Now Twitter will give brands a home. The new pages allow marketers to customize their headers in a way that makes their logos and taglines more prominent. They can also choose a tweet to stay at the top of their page, and that tweet will be automatically expand -- even if the visitor doesn't click on it -- to show a photo or video.
Launch partners for the pages include American Express, Best Buy, Bing, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, Dell, Disney, General Electric, Hewlitt-Packard, Intel, JetBlue, Kia, McDonald’s, Nike, PepsiCo, Staples, Verizon Wireless, NYSE Euronext, Heineken, Subway and Paramount Pictures.
2. Profile Pages
Twitter profiles now look more like Facebook and Google+ profiles. User information such as favorites, lists, and images have been moved to the upper left-hand side of the page -- the web reader's focus sweet spot.
3. In-Line Conversations, Images and Videos
In the Facebook News Feed, it's easy to ease drop on conversations between friends because comments on status updates pile up directly beneath them. It's easy to browse videos and photos because they appear in-line with other information.
Twitter has taken another step closer to News Feed's design. It already had allowed users to view media and conversations associated with tweets in the sidebar. But now one click inserts that same content directly to the feed. Once you open up a tweet to view this additional information, it stays open in your feed.
4. Discovery Through Connections
Facebook tells you when your friends become friends with other people, join groups and share links. Now Twitter tells you what connections are retweeting, following and favoriting. The feature originally launched as an "activity stream" in August. In the new design, it lives under the "Discover" tab.