Twitter is turning its text-messaging Web site into a multimedia showcase by adding a new pane that will make it easier for its 160 million users to check out photos and video.
The redesign unveiled Tuesday may compel people to linger on Twitter’s Web site for longer periods and come back more frequently, making it a more attractive advertising vehicle.
“We are still figuring out all the new possibilities,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in an interview.
The face-lift, expected to roll out around the world in the next few days, splits the Web site into two panes. One is devoted to the 90 million messages, or “tweets,” posted on Twitter each day, and the other features the images contained within the text. Until now, most links to photos and video have been displayed on other Web sites or browser tabs.
The new look further underscores Twitter’s emergence as a major communications hub.
In the process, Twitter has evolved from a geeky hangout when it started four years ago to a worldwide phenomenon today.
People are mainly opening accounts now so they can follow the tweets from the friends, family, celebrities, media outlets and lawmakers that interest them. These spectators, or “lurkers,” tend to only publish their own thoughts or observations periodically.
Forrester Research analyst Augie Ray said he believes the growing audience of spectators is the main reasons that Twitter had to do something to make it easier to wade through the sea of content cascading through its Web site each day.
“Improving consumption of Twitter-based content is important not just for Twitter, but for interactive marketers as well,” Ray wrote in a Tuesday blog post.
Twitter didn’t even start allowing advertising within a limited number of tweets until five months ago. The privately held company, based in San Francisco, still gets most of its revenue from a…