New Look Twitter Takes a Step in the Right Direction

Perhaps a little late to the game, I got around to taking in the new look Twitter yesterday. With a single click, I was presented with what seemed like a bigger, better Twitter; at least on first look.
 
  

Promising to put everything in one place, this major facelift seemed to provide a better overall UI, with perhaps a few additional features to boot.
After taking a quick browse around, the first of the changes quickly became apparent - the new UI is essentially broken up in to four components:
- the feed or "timeline" (left hand side)
- the information section (right hand side)

- the menu, now across the top of the page, with a relative position (in css terms)
When you hover over a tweet, an > icon appears that lets you expand the tweet out across the information section onto the right hand side of the page, giving you a much bigger and better view of not only the tweet, but the user's last few tweets too, and, perhaps most importantly, replies to that tweet. Also, if there was, for example, a link to a YouTube video in the tweet, this could be watched from within this expanded view. The same goes for TwitPics, and being able to view those in the Tweet is a nice feature.
You'll also notice that the search box has moved to a more intuitive and sensible position in the "toolbar" across the top of the app. As I mentioned, the position of this element is relative to the browser window, so as you scroll, it "follows" you down the page.

Looking at my username on the right hand side of the toolbar, I started getting excited: was Twitter finally going to offer us multiple account switching? Google have done it, and of course, there are many Twitter clients and web apps like Brizzly that can handle multiple Twitter accounts, unify their timelines, allow for tweeting from more than one account at the same time, and more besides.
Sadly, when I clicked on the drop-down menu, I saw no such feature.
Shame! If Twitter had provided this functionality, I'd have use for Seesmic, TweetDeck or Brizzly, save for the way they allow you to add your Facebook account as well.
For a nice run through of the new features, watch the new Twitter demo.

Read more:

• A Comprehensive Look At The #NewTwitter Changes To Twitter.com (just-ask-kim.com)
• Hands On with New Twitter Design: What's New? (shoutmeloud.com)
• The New Twitter is an Attack on All Desktop Apps (mashable.com)
• Twitter unveils major redesign (bbc.co.uk)
• Twitter facelifts its homepage (go.theregister.com)