Los Angeles — While the enormous amount of information circulating into Twitter often makes discovering unique, new voices difficult, Twitter is rolling out support for real-time activity streams to help users follow new accounts, some Twitter users today received a notification when they logged into the site: “New! Activity / View favorites, follows, retweets and more by people you follow in Activity. / View your mentions, tweets that were retweeted and more in @.”
Back in August, Twitter introduced some innovative features that aimed to help users “discover more.” These attributes included the “activity stream” and the “@username stream,” both designed to expand on the “@mentions” tab and allow users easier access to information regarding retweets, followers, favorited tweets and more.
Now, the new tabs pops-up below the message field, next to the tab for Timeline. To the right, the Searches and Lists tabs remain as they were before. But as of now, at least for some users, the @mentions tab has been replaced with the @username and Activity tabs.
First, let us look at the @username tab:
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Interestingly, as you can see, by clicking @joshgwolf, Twitter now gives me “@mentions and more.” That “more” encompass people who have followed me recently, people who have retweeted one of my tweets and people who have favorited one of my tweets.
This stream is especially useful because it takes some of the clunkiness out of notifications on Twitter. Instead of swarming your inbox with messages every time someone follows you, this stream provides all of that information for you.
Next, we have the Activity stream:
Moreover, activity compresses a few features and functions into one place. For instance, it displays all the activity around marking favorites as well as following activity, such as when someone new follows you, or when someone you follow begins following a another person. The Activity tab also seems to encourage more following activity. A button next to almost everyone’s name in the Activity tab lets you follow them with a single click.
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Moreover, the @ panel now displays both messages sent publicly to you and the most recent people who have started following you. An option is available to show only @ mentions if you prefer.
Although these updates are relatively modest in terms of Twitter’s overall look and performance, unlike the more extreme changes to design and functionality that are commonly seen at Facebook.
Nevertheless, the new additions to the Twitter interface make Twitter feel even more social. The Activity stream is reminiscent of looking at your Facebook feed, but it does not feel derivative. The @username stream brings everything that happens to you into one, streamlined feed. It is possible that these new features could help Twitter feel more personal, and put an emphasis on not only what you say, but what you do.