Skip to content

Will Twitter redesign entice more lawyers to join?

image
August 29, 2014

As reported Friday evening by the Wall Street Journal’s Yoree Koh (@YoreeKoh), Twitter, in the hope that more users will sign up and stick around, has redesigned its signup process. The redesign includes a number of new features.

Christian Ostlien (@christianism), in product management at Twitter, tweeted that the redesign, in the works for months, is the first in three years.

Lawyers and others commonly complain that they cannot figure out Twitter. To some extent, their gripes are legitimate, Twitter is not intuitive to new users.

Will the redesign work? Here’s what you have.

A more welcoming intro to Twitter.

Twitter redesign

A lot of the confusion came with not knowing where to start and who to follow. Until now Twitter, on signup, would suggest users follow a few other users within areas such as music, news, technology and sports.

Now, Twitter first asks users to identify their interests in areas including technology, news, fashion, sports, business, science, and government.

Though there is no “law,” I do not see that as a big problem for lawyers, there’s more than enough to get started and get a feel how to add users in niches on your own.

Twitter redesign

Based on those choices, Twitter offers suggestions as to specific accounts to follow. For example, users who chose “technology” might see a tweet from Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone.

Adding a sample tweet from suggested accounts before a user selects someone to follow is a nice addition. Until now users just saw a photo.

Rather than selecting accounts, Twitter, by default, will preselect accounts to follow with users required to deselect those they do not want to follow.

Twitter redesign

The last page asks new users for permission to access their email address books to identify business associates and friends who are already on Twitter. Nice addition as lawyers will likely be surprised as to who’s already using Twitter and how they are using it.

Twitter redesign

I like the clean look and believe the simple walk through intro will be of help to lawyers new to Twitter.

But at the end of the day, lawyers need to get on and drive Twitter to truly understand its value for information, relationships, and growing word of mouth.

Posted in: