Major Twitter redesign will draw in more lawyers and law firms

Twitter is in the process of rolling out a major redesign of its Web and mobile platforms.

From Brett Molina, writing for USA Today, on the Twitter redesign:

The layout is cleaner, featuring tabs across the top of the screen: Home, Connect and Discover. Home hosts the main feed of Tweets from other users; Connect is where they can directly contact others; and Discover is where they can find popular topics or hashtags and view the activity of followed users…….Profile pages are also being expanded so individuals and companies can showcase more information about themselves in text, photos and video.

I like what Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo, has to say on the change.

The redesign is an attempt to “bridge the gap between the awareness of Twitter and the engagement on Twitter.

Roughly 40 percent of Twitter’s more than 100 million active users log into the service without ever posting a “tweet” — messages limited to no more than 140 characters. That isn’t a problem because those people still actively use the service, as they enjoy the information that they get from the people and companies that they are following.

We are going to offer simplicity in a world of complexity.

Here’s a screenshot of the new interface to give you an idea of the changes.

Twitter, though a very powerful information sharing and relationship building tool for lawyers, has never been very intuitive to use. It takes some experimenting and imagination to learn how to use Twitter. Plus the interface is little dated compared to other social media and networking sites.

Early adopters in the legal community are rightfully all over Twitter. But the majority of lawyers and law firms have been tentative at best when it comes to Twitter.

I saw the new Twitter redesign last night for a short while on my account page and agree with Molina’s positive assessment of the changes and with Costello that Twitter will become simpler and draw more engagement.

There’s no question the expanded user profile pages will draw in lawyers who the see the opportunity to add to their Internet identity.

Twitter is likely to win over more lawyers and law firms who have found Twitter difficult to use and a bit unprofessional in their minds. Twitter is already mainstream among influencers (bloggers, reporters, association leaders) of a law firm’s clients and prospective clients as well as clients themselves. These changes will get lawyers sitting in the fence as to Twitter engaged in using it.

For more information the changes Twitter provides a website on the redesign and blog post explaining the changes.