The moment I wanted to check my Twitter profile and opened the twitter home page today, I got stuck for couple of seconds by looking at the home page. Then I felt happy after realizing what made Twitter do this.

Getting accurate information regarding a topic in Twitter always been a tricky thing. Since the characters are limited to 140, people share whatever they can in the limited span with hashtags. Twitter is the best place for News, Updates, Celebrities, artists without a doubt. But to get the correct information regarding something in your feed, you got to follow correct accounts. Even if you think some hot topic is trending, the tweets you get to see are displayed to you time of posting, many of which just mention the hashtag or keyword just because it is trending and tweet it.

Realizing this problem, twitter rolled out an update to the home page which lists various top tweets depending on the likes and retweets they’ve got, sorted out in different topics. Main ones being Featured- a glimpse of all topics, News – with whats happening today, Entertainment – what’s going on in the fun world, Sports, Music, Government and Politics, TV, Good, Business, Women, NGOs and Social Causes, there are sub topics (Twitter calling them as streams) as well in each to check out. You can select a category you like, browse top tweets. Not only that, you can also copy the twitter link in the menu section of the tweet. This would really come handy if you want to embed a tweet or something you can do that without even logging in into the website which would save you some time. There are general options under each tweet, such as to reply, like or retweet, to use which, you need to have an account though.

Another great thing in the new home page update is Twitter included a search bar as well. Use hashtags, keywords regarding a topic you want to get informed about, and Twitter will display results containing them. With this option, you could actually use Twitter without creating an account.

Rolling out this update, Twitter said,

”
Before today, you could see individual Tweets but it was hard to discover stories and conversations happening on Twitter without signing in. Now, you can check out a news story as it unfolds, dive into the play-by-play discussions around a game, and then come back again to see that exchange between two rappers everyone’s been talking about. It’s real-time and straight from the source, just like the Twitter experience for those who log in.
”

The main thing about his update is, you need to not log in. Twitter made this update to the homepage even if you aren’t a Twitter user you can use this feature to get an overview of what’s happening on Twitter. The company also mentions in the update that approximately 500 million people visit the website to know what is happening around the world (with or without account). Clearly, this step taken by company having 320 million monthly active user base, shows that it is planning to gain more users by letting you know what’s it is all about in the homepage itself without actually logging in.

Below is a list of streams (in India) you can browse individually

• Entertainment
• News
• Sports
• Music
• Government and Politics
• TV
• Food Fashion and Lifestyle
• Business, Brands and CEOs
• Women, NGOs and Social Causes

The current update is currently available in 23 countries in both mobile and web versions and the streams vary depending on your location. Here is the list of countries –

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Japan, Kenya, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, South Africa, Taiwan, the UK and the US.