Twitter Debuts Its First Redesign

Boy, did John Mayer pick a bad time to quit Twitter.

If the loquacious pop star could have held off on Monday’s announcement that he was shutting down his Twitter account and bolting to Tumblr., leaving his 3.7 million-plus Twitter followers in a social media wasteland, he could have been part of the revelry surrounding Twitter’s announcement Tuesday that it’s reinventing itself – starting with a major redesign of its homepage.

The most noticeable of the Twitter tweaks is the two-pane layout, which incorporates the regular feed of your totally must-read, daily musings on the left and a ‘details pane’ on the right; here, you can view videos, maps and photos.

To go along with the design revamp, Twitter execs said deals had been signed with 15 photo and video companies, including YouTube and Flickr, to have their content embedded on Twitter.com.

The redesign will begin to roll out to Twitter’s 160 million users over the next few weeks.

The prime goal of the new design, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams said during the announcement at the company’s San Francisco-based headquarters, is to make the micro-blogging service easier and faster to use.

“We like the old Twitter but we thought we could make it better,” said Williams.

“We are so excited about the new one because it has everything the old one had but it is faster, easier to get more information and we think it is just an overall better experience.”

No doubt there’s also a big, advertising play wrapped up with all the design goodness.

There’s a nice look at the new Twitter here.

Back to John Mayer. He joins fellow celebs like Miley Cyrus, Ricky Gervais, Amanda Bynes and LeAnn Rimes who have closed their Twitter accounts recently.