If Twitter looked a little different this morning, don't fret. The service is just getting a new look, which is rolling out across twitter.com, Twitter for iOS, Twitter for Android, TweetDeck, and Twitter Lite.
"Today, with lots of feedback and ideas from you, we're refreshing our product … and making it feel lighter, faster, and easier to use," Twitter's VP of user research and design, Grace Kim, wrote in a Thursday blog post.
Perhaps most notably, Twitter has replaced the reply icon (an arrow) with a speech bubble. Kim said people — especially Twitter newbies — thought the old reply icon meant "delete or go back to a previous page," so the company is hoping this change makes the platform more intuitive. It will undoubtedly take some getting used to for existing users, however.
Meanwhile, Twitter took a visual cue from Instagram and made profile photos round. The company also tweaked its typography "to make it more consistent" and added "bolder headlines to make it easier to focus on what's happening," Kim wrote.
Tweets will now "update instantly with reply, retweet, and like counts so you can see conversations as they're happening"—but not on Twitter.com and Twitter Lite.
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On iOS, Twitter is also adding some additional accessibility choices such as increased color contrast. In thea app, you'll see a new side navigation menu and fewer tabs at the bottom of the app, a change Twitter first introduced on Android last year. Plus, links to articles and websites will now open in Safari's viewer in the Twitter iOS app, which will let you easily access accounts on websites you're already signed into.
Kim said that Twitter "listened closely" to user requests when putting together these changes. But it's still mum on one highly requested feature. Late last year, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey posted a tweet asking users "what's the most important thing you want to see Twitter improve or create in 2017?" For many, the answer was simple: a way to edit tweets. Others requested a way to bookmark or save things. Looks like we'll have to wait a bit longer on both fronts.
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