Twitter had a little surprise for us this afternoon. Empower were given the option of upgrading to the new look Twitter profile. So we just had to turn it on. The new look has a much bigger emphasis on media, from the 400 x 400 profile image to the whopping 1500 x 500 header images. Needless to say, the new look Twitter will be looking lovely on retina screens. We’re sure there’s also going to be a barrage of “How to make the most of Twitter’s new design” posts coming up, most of them revolving around the use of high-quality images. With both Facebook and Google+ placing more emphasis on visual elements and the rise of visual social networks like Pinterest, most brands should be well prepared for this change anyway. If you’re not sure where to find good images, take a look at new high-res, high quality and royalty free stock photo sites such as Unsplash and Death To Stock Photo. Way better than Flickr commons search and more legal than taking whatever you find on Google image search. One other change to take a closer look at is Pinned Tweets. While most people will only see this pinned tweet if they visit your profile directly, it’s a good way to show the kind of things that interest you beyond your bio – especially if your last few tweets aren’t reflective of what you normally tweet about. With the larger profile photo, larger header images, and the pinned tweet, we’re going to see some creative uses of all three together. And when combined with Twitter Advertising, profiles pages just got a lot of interesting on Twitter. The other new features that Twitter mentioned are: Best Tweets: Tweets that have received more engagement will appear slightly larger, so your best content is easy to find. Filtered Tweets: Now you can choose which timeline to view when checking out other profiles. Select from these options: Tweets, Tweets with photos/videos, or Tweets and replies. At the moment, Best Tweets just seems to put your most retweeted or favourited tweets IN A BIGGER FONT, but we’ll see how this works once more people have the new design for their profiles. Read more about the changes on the Twitter blog, follow Empower on Twitter, and take a look at some of the other profiles with the new look: Film stars @zacefron and @channingtatum French TV host @nikosaliagas Australian Football League @AFL First Lady Michelle Obama @flotus Brazilian singer, guitarist, and songwriter @gilbertogil Boxer @FloydMayweather TV star @kerrywashington Musicians @JohnLegend and band @weezer
