When Twitter warned developers last March against building Twitter clients, it used one word repeatedly in its announcement: “consistent”.
“We need to ensure that tweets, and tweet actions, are rendered in a consistent way so that people have the same experience with tweets no matter where they are,” wrote Twitter platform lead Ryan Sarver.
Today, Twitter announced a “better app for your mobile browser” that it says will offer exactly that: “a high-quality and consistent Twitter experience on high-end touchscreen devices”.
The new version of the mobile Twitter websites was built “from the ground up” for smartphones and tablets. Accordingly, Twitter says that it is optimized for these devices, which “have more advanced browsers that support the latest web technologies, including HTML5.”
It’s rich – it takes advantage of capabilities that high-end device browsers offer, such as touch gestures and a large screen. And it’s simple – it’s easy-to-use and has the features you’d expect from a Twitter application, including your timeline, @mentions, messages that you can read in conversation view, search, trending topics, lists, and more.
The app is making its way initially only to a small number of iPhone, iPod Touch and Android smartphones, with other devices being added in the coming weeks. In many ways, the new Twitter mobile app looks much like the #newtwitter that the company released last September, with embedded images and the like. Take a look:
I guess I have just a couple questions about “consistency.” Is it synonymous with “boring” and is it appropriate for the mobile Web? Am I looking for the same thing from my mobile Twitter use as when I use the website? I’m not so sure.
