Twitter to revamp home page for the masses

Twitter will give your business wings, or at the very least, it will send along some cute cartoon birds to carry your briefcase for you.

(Credit: Twitter)

Twitter's home page definitely gets some Zen cred by consisting of little more than a text field that asks, "What are you doing?" But that's apparently about to change.

According to Kara Swisher at AllThingsD, there will very soon be a major revamp to Twitter.com.

The reason is to give potential Twitter users--you know, the ones who are curious about what these "tweets" on CNN are--a better idea of exactly what the service is and what they can do with it.

This is slated to launch next week.

"You can try (Twitter) out without having to sign up, so you can get an idea of what Twitter is before you use it," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told AllThingsD. "We need to do a better job of explaining ourselves to people who hear about us and then have no idea what do to."

Part of this has gone live already: a section called "Twitter 101," geared toward businesses that want to use the microblogging service for publicity, marketing, or customer relations. Co-founder Biz Stone announced this in a blog post on Thursday evening.

"We coordinated with business students and writers to surface some interesting findings, best practices, steps for getting started, and case studies," Stone wrote. "The results demonstrate how customers are getting value out of Twitter and suggest techniques businesses can employ to enhance that value."

This is important because of troubling (albeit unofficial) statistics that Twitter's ubiquity may be fleeting. The majority of new users reportedly don't stick around, and third-party studies have found that a small number of active members are responsible for the vast majority of "tweets."

Getting a "real" home page could also be key for future revenue opportunities on Twitter's end. The site is so lightweight that many avid users rarely access it at all, instead using third-party clients like Twhirl or TweetDeck. For Twitter, which still doesn't have a head of sales, getting people back to its homepage could be the first step in making a buck or two off it.

[Christal-Richards]

Great. More marketing. I joined Twitter, and use it to network with other people and to find information, NOT to be sold MORE products. I can't stand when Twitter users try to sell me things, and I don't push my design services on any of my followers. In fact, I block any user trying to sell me a product. There is already too much spam going on on Twitter. I love the "block" feature.

[Super2online]

Unfortunately many businesses don't understand that there is a value proposition that customers expect if you are going to market your products or services to them. So create a separate business account that is open about your intentions and ensure you take care of the customer value proposition and you won't get the reaction you see from Christal-Richards.

[Harrison912]

I mainly use Twitter to socially market my safety and security web site. This would have been very helpful to me about a year ago. It's great that they're finally helping us figure Twitter out!

[cvaldes1831]

The Twitter website is currently one of the worst ways to access the Twitter service. The site does a p*ss-poor job at explaining the benefits of the Twitter service.

No wonder these guys can't come up with a business plan. They can't even market their own service effectively ON THEIR OWN HOME PAGE.

The success of the Twitter service is amazing DESPITE the company's fumblings -- both from the technical side as well as the marketing side.

[ca5ter]

I only Twitter when I'm taking a crap.

And that's when I update everyone about my bowel movements.

Damn is Twitter lame!