By Twitter for Android has gotten another big upgrade, with the company bringing yet another refresh to their clean user interface. Things look a tad more bright and a tad more flat, and they’ve compressed a lot of the menu options to make more room for viewing the timeline. Said change brings us a new layout for navigating your Tweets that you might find a bit weird to get used to at first.
For starters, you have three main tabs:
- Home: This is where all the Tweets and ReTweets from the people you follow show up, just like a traditional timeline. This view will show conversations in-line, so you won’t have to hunt down a secondary menu option.
- Discover: This is where Twitter shoves all the Tweets they think you’ll like, suggestions of people to follow, trending topics and more.
- Activity: This is where you go to stalk your friends (rather, where you go to see what they’re saving as favorites, who they’ve started following and more).
You might notice that list doesn’t include anything to view mentions. That’s because Twitter has set all that stuff up under a new Notifications section that’ll show you everything that is pertinent to you, including mentions, people who have started following you, people who have saved or ReTweeted your Tweets, when someone has sent you a direct message and more.
The Notifications icon will light up with a number whenever there is something new for you, and since it’s always in view no matter which timeline you’re in it’s never too hard to figure out if something is waiting for you.
Finally, Twitter for Android has gotten a unique feature that allows you to be notified whenever any specific user Tweets. Simply tap the star icon on their profile page, and you’ll get a notification whenever they send their 140 characters out to the world. It’s great for keeping tabs on people that you might otherwise miss in situations where your timeline is being flooded by other bits of nonsense. You can find the new upgrade over in the Google Play Store for free.
How’s the performance? I have gone through many tries and the twitter app is a soul-sucking I mean battery-sucking mess
Seems slower and more sluggish than any past Twitter version. I’m on Galaxy Note 2.
Going to take more than flat and bright to get me to switch from Falcon Pro.
Worst update ever. .. I don’t use the activity or discover tabs ….might just get a new launcher. Any recommendations?
I like it however i dont care much for the discover tab. and the activity tab acting as dual notifications seems pointless. If you could choose your tabs it would be great.
I’d don’t care for the update. It definitely seems slower (GN2). Switching to Tweedle, which seems a lot more responsive, but it is missing a some features.
Falcon Pro is in my opinion the best Twitter app you can use. BUT if you can’t use that, I find Tweedle to be a good app as well.
This a great update. Love the new UI and interfaces.
Oh neat… Twitter has become Tweetbook
I actually like the update. It’s fast and smooth for my phone and tablet (even a 3 year old tablet handles it better than the last version of Twitter, with smoother transitions between the tabs).
I like that notifications are accessible from the top no matter which tab you’re in. I’m actually finding myself using the activity tab more to see what my fellow followers are doing, so overall, I’m happy with the update.
Awful. Tried to stop this in the beta testing group but I guess they didn’t listen to me.