Liveblogging From Twitter HQ For Special Announcement
Tonight (Tuesday, September 14) Twitter is holding a press event to make an announcement. The event is scheduled for 4 pm PDT (7 pm EDT). No details are available yet. I'll be attending the conference along with my peer Melissa Parrish.
If you're interested in getting the Twitter news as it is available, visit this page during the event and refresh often. Or, I'll also be sharing Twitter-sized updates via Twitter: @augieray.
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Live Blog Transcripts:
3:55 pm The crowd is set and waiting for the Twitter press event to get underway. I'll update this page throughout the event–hit F5 or click the refresh button from time to time if you're following along live.
4:06 pm Biz Stone (@biz) and Evan Williams (@ev) are getting us kicked off. There's an egg on the screen and Biz promises to tell us whats in the egg.
4:10 pm Ev says that "Twitter is getting better–and bigger." Twitter mobile users are up 250% this year, thanks to their own branded apps. 16% of new users getting started on mobile.
4:15 pm Twitter levels the playing field between creators and consumers of content more than any other platform before. In the beginning, they put emphasis on publishing via Twitter, but in order to get started on Twitter, you don't have to tweet any more than you need to create a Web page to use the Web.
4:20 pm 90% of the content on Twitter is public, so helping people find the content relevant to them is the challenge. Twitter gets 90M tweets/day and growth continues quite strongly–chart shows no leveling of tweets/day!
4:25 pm @ev: Twitter.com is the most popular client–78% of active users have used it in last 30 days. About half ONLY use Twitter.com. Just announced they are launching a new Twitter.com.
4:25 pm Video of new Twitter.com: Larger pane on right showing details, playing videos, displaying pics. No clicking off Twitter.com to interact w/ content. Details coming shortly.
4:30 pm The new right panel on Twitter is wider; will force design changes in backgrounds. As you interact with tweets on left panel, details appear on right. See playable videos, maps, pictures and more without clicking off the site. Profile picture is increasing and the prominence of the bio is greater. This design makes it MUCH easier to interact with Twitter and tweets; get more information without leaving site; easier to explore tweets without losing your place in the tweetstream.
4:30 Ev says, "Changes are all about speed, responsiveness and discovery." New Twitter.com launching today for select users. Incremental rollout will take indeterminate amount of time.
4:35 pm The Twitter event is moving into Q&A, so rather than keep updating, here is my detailed blog post on what the new Twitter.com is, why it matters, and what it means to you: Breaking News: Twitter’s New User Interface And What It Means To You.