Twitter has rolled out two new features that are designed to let users know which of their tweets resonate with their followers, and also get a better look at the activity of the people they follow. The new features appear to be aimed at giving users more insight into how their behavior is affecting their social graph on the service, and potentially boost Twitter’s “stickiness” factor by encouraging people to spend more time exploring the site.
The first change is that the “@mentions” tab on Twitter.com (all the changes are available only on the website for now) has been renamed “@username” with the person’s name, and it not only shows who mentioned that Twitter handle, but also which of their tweets have been marked as a “favorite” by other users, which have been re-tweeted, and their newest followers (Tweetdeck, a popular Twitter app that the company recently acquired, also shows these things in a user’s stream).
In a blog post Wednesday afternoon, the company said these additions to the username tab are meant to provide “a simple way to see what’s happening on Twitter in relation to you.” It looks like this (click to enlarge):
Also being added is a new “activity” tab on the Twitter dashboard, which shows users the latest favorites, re-tweets and new following activity from the people that they follow. It looks like this:
I think the new additions are great. A big complaint I’ve had about Twitter for some time now is the lack of visibility it gives me into how much impact my Tweets have — and my limited options for checking out how people I’m interested in are using the site. These two features should make the site a much more satisfying experience for many users.
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