I’d been noticing the new Twitter backgrounds rolling out and thought it would be some time before they rolled it out to me. Then I saw a tweet that said they are available to everyone – April 22nd. You can get it here https://about.twitter.com/products/new-profiles.
The new profile look is all about getting a B – I – G screen-width image that makes an impact on the viewer.
When you click the ‘get it now’ you’re taken back to your own page where your current photos are stretched out over the entire screen. My photo will be updated to take advantage of the 1500px wide maximum ‘cover’ image. Yes, it does remind me of Facebook when they expanded to use all of the screen. There have been quite a few comments on that.
To get your started, Twitter has a linkto this Flickr account where there are 32 gorgeous full-width photos from which to choose for your header. I downloaded one and noted the size was 1500px x 500px.
Header and Profile Upgrade
Your profile photo is also a bit larger and is moved over to the left. Preferred dimensions are 400px by 400px, but I noticed my photo seemed to fill the space in just fine. I thought the old Twitter profile photos were a bit small.
Features have been moved. The intro paragraph describing yourself is now below your profile photo and below that are your photos/videos. Next is ‘who to follow’. Relegated to the lowest position on the left is ‘Trending Now’. I think they should make the Trending section above the fold.
With your profile photo over to the left, the rest of the width is left for your image. If you’re a brand or have a business, take advantage of designing something eye-catching and relevant to project your image. Go ahead and add text, as far as I know, there are no regulations from Twitter as to how you set your cover up. You can see mine is nice, but there’s a lot of optimizing I could do.
You’ll see the ‘Edit Profile’ area over to the right. Click on this and you can edit just your header, profile or theme. This is a change that is very welcome as people would be confused when trying to do this in the ‘Settings’ area and getting these areas confused. Of course there is the regular ‘Settings’ – the little sun-shaped icon in the upper right for adjusting your other settings.
Tweet sizes are different
You’ll notice a change in font sizes of your tweets. You’ll see some are in a large font and some are in a smaller (regular) font. It seems that RT (retweets), replies and photos get the large font, but I’m not sure just yet.
Pin Your Tweet
Yes, you now have the ability to pin a tweet to the top of your page. Here’s an example from my friend Cheryl, the @SMTulsa Queen and @PartyAficiondo. To pin a tweet, simply hover over the three small dots under a tweet and select ‘Pin to your profile page’. You can pin only your tweets, not other people’s tweets.
New Follower Format
Check out the new format here. Instead of having the profile image and a couple line description for each of your followers, you now have a thumbnail, including their background image, profile photo and description. It takes up quite a bit of space and there’s a lot of scrolling involved to get through followers (they are in order of when they started following). In a way it’s handy because having all this information is helpful when you’re culling your list for relevance or whatever.
Does this make you want to get your new Twitter profile and change things up or do you like it the old way? Leave me a comment with your thoughts.