It’s not clear if the new homepage is live for everyone yet, but here’s a screenshot:(http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/twitter1.jpg)
Twitter has just rolled out a new homepage that non-logged in users see when they visit Twitter.com. It features scrolling trending topics, “top tweets” (a tweet from Justin Bieber was the first one I saw… go figure), and a “who’s here” with avatars of well-known users and brands that are on the microblogging service.
The last major overhaul to Twitter’s homepage came last summer, when the site rolled out a design that focused on trending topics. Unfortunately, that meant a homepage littered with quirky hashtags and Twitter memes (and Bieber) — perhaps not the most enticing for prospective users visiting the site.
Here’s what the old one looked like:
(http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/twitterhomepage.jpg)
The latest homepage seems to de-emphasize the trending topics, and instead focus on popular users, in the form of tweets and the “who’s here” section. That would seem to represent a compromise between exerting editorial control over trending topics (which I’ve proposed) and painting Twitter in the right light to outsiders.