On top of the new Twitter retweet feature, I also have the new web-based method for alerts about new tweets from people you follow. These changes are all bringing the functionality of the Twitter web interface closer to that of desktop clients.
New: new tweets
When you’re looking at the web version of Twitter (if you have this new feature), it now goes off and checks to see if there any new tweets from people you follow since you loaded the page.
If there are, a message appears saying “XX new tweets” (and this is then updated periodically). Click this, and the new tweets appear in an AJAXy way (ie the whole page doesn’t reload). So you no longer need to do anything to check for new tweets – it does this for you.
Twitter: web page now alerts you to new tweets without having to reload
The tab’s title updates with the number of new tweets
The title of the page also updates with this message – so if you have Twitter open in a different window, you can see that there are new tweets.
There’s one drawback with the system – the trending topics don’t update unless you manually refresh the page.
If this looks familiar …
Those of you who use the web interface for Twitter may recognise this – it’s very similar to the existing functionality on Twitter search – you’d see the results, and a message would then appear (and update every few seconds) about new results. Like this:
This new tweets funcionality was already used on the search results page
You’re using Twitter via the web?!?
Yes, I still am. I use the excellent Greasemonkey script by @Troynt, which has always had a RT function, and also shows you who (out of people you follow) is following you, lengthens URLs etc.
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- Newspapers on Twitter – how the Guardian, FT and Times are winning
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