Following the significant shake-up of the social media landscape within the last month, Twitter has made its first move to keep up by adding two new tabs and finalising the rollout of its photo-sharing feature.
Via the official Twitter blog, the micro-blogging service announced yesterday the replacement of the “@mentions” tab with two new tabs that add new social activity layers: the “@username” and “Activity” tabs.
The @username tab allows users to see what's happening on Twitter in relation to them. “You'll be able to see which of your Tweets are Favourites, plus the latest Retweets (of your Tweets). Tweets directed to you, and your new Followers,” explains Twitter.
The Activity tab adds some Facebook-like social functionality and highlights the latest favourites, retweets and follows from the user's Twitter community.
The new tabs are expected to significantly alter Twitter's traditional linear, reverse chronological timeline and build on the service's social graph.
The main stream will remain as is, but users will be able to reply, retweet and follow from within the new streams created by the new tabs.
The new features have only been rolled out to a small group of users as yet, but will continue to expand throughout the month. According to reports, Twitter will only release the updates on the actual site, and is still looking into how the new features will work in mobile applications.
Inside competition
At the beginning of June, Twitter unveiled its own photo-sharing tool which has been slowly rolled out, but this week became available to all users.
Photo-sharing on Twitter has until now remained the domain of third-party apps such as yfrog and Twitpic, but the new feature is powered by Photobucket (which also hosts uploaded images).
The feature allows users to make use of a camera icon that appears below the “What's Happening?” box in order to add an image to a tweet. Reports say Twitter also plans to add galleries to its photo feature.
The rollout has ruffled the feathers of third-party developers who found a niche in catering for the services that Twitter itself did not offer. Now, however, Twitter will be directly competing with the third-party services that it has traditionally supported.
Here comes Heello
In June, Mashable reported that Twitpic CEO Noah Everett had said he was blindsided by the news that Twitter was launching its own photo-sharing feature.
Reports have, however, emerged this week that Everett has launched his own answer to Twitter, called Heello.
Heello essentially replicates Twitter's micro-blogging model and includes photo-sharing and video-sharing. The new service also allows for following (called “listening to”) and the sending and receiving of replies. Updates are called “pings” and these can be “echoed” (reposted) by other users. Pings are limited to 140 characters.
The service is live at www.heello.com, and will have its work cut out for it in carving a place for itself against Twitter's 200 million-strong user base.
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