Do you have the new Twitter tabs on your account yet?

Twitter has started to incrementally roll out a new activity stream tab and a streamlined user-centric tab, both of which were promised in a blog post on August 10. Whenever it does a new update, Twitter introduces the changes bit by bit, so some users will have the new version whilst others are still using the old. Although promised two months ago, it is only now that the new tabs are being seen in the wild. The activity tab, says Twitter, “provides a rich new source of discovery by highlighting the latest Favorites, Retweets, and Follows from the people you follow on Twitter – all in one place.” The new @username tab collects together your mentions (previously called @ messages), shows you which of your Tweets have been favourited, and which have been retweeted. It also shows you any new followers. Says TechCrunch:

The rollout will convert information previously delivered through email notifications or only visible by expanding tweets into streams that can be viewed from the home page. It will also help Twitter increase the interconnections in its social graph by highlighting who the people you follow are following and giving you the chance to do the same. Some users including Sean Parker have seen the features roll back and forth, indicating that Twitter may still be tweaking a few things.

[caption id=“attachment_127508” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Do you have the new Twitter tabs yet? - Reuters”]  [/caption] But the new features are getting a mixed reaction, with some users feeling that the move makes Twitter too much like Facebook. However, for users who access Twitter via a third party desktop or mobile client such as Tweetdeck or Seesmic, these design tweaks are irrelevant because their experience of Twitter won’t change. It’s unclear what percentage of people solely use the website. Twitter said in September 2010 that 78% of people use the website, whereas other estimates put it lower, at around 50%. But users who get a lot of followers and retweets may find this new redesign is a step backwards: having @ replies mixed in with all the other notifications will make it harder to spot messages that you might want to respond to. Although anyone who finds the new amalgamated activity streams a deal-breaker does at least have the choice to switch to a desktop client instead. Have you seen the new Twitter tabs show up on your account? What do you think of them?