Twitter is experimenting with expanded redesigns of user profiles, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. If true, we could see some significant changes.
Bloomberg cited a person “with knowledge of the matter” who asked to remain unidentified and provided only vague details, and Twitter did not respond to Digital Trends’ request for comment, so this overhaul remains both unconfirmed and unknown in its specifics.
The source noted that expanded profiles will allow users to highlight certain content over others, like their most popular tweets. As is, Twitter homepages for users have remained fairly consistent over the years, with a single profile picture and a short biography over a constantly-updating feed of the users’ tweets. Tweaks to the profile format, like allowing for inline editing, have been relatively minor. And users’ most popular tweets are treated the same way as their ignored tweets: they get buried to make way for newer communications.
Third parties like Favstar have developed ways to surface the most popular tweets, so adding an option to highlight popular tweets could impinge on their territory.
Twitter is currently on a blazingly successful push to attract advertisers and boost user engagement, and these potential profile changes are likely an attempt to unearth a new way to engage users and keep them on the site.