There are some sayings that the “wisemen” of our age have coined. One of them is “an app a day keeps the doctor away”. I have mine too: a tweet a day keeps misinformation away. The growth of microblogging site Twitter has been phenomenal and there’s no lying it is headed for some big things. Today, Twitter rolled some small but noticeable changes to its official Android application.
I have loved the update which comes barely a month after the Twitter bird got an overhaul to have its beak face upwards. Apart from a major downtime sometime towards the end of last month, Twitter has been relatively stable and the update to their flagship app is just part of the normal roll out of new features. Though not many may notice, the changes do add something to the eventual user experience. One now does not need to click a link in order to see the contents. Simply tapping the tweet to view more details will, in addition to revealing the client/app used to send the tweet and the time it was sent, show you a snapshot of the contents of the shared link. Twitter.com has been having such a feature for long. The expanded tweets feature also extends to multimedia content that whose links have been shared e.g. photos, videos etc. Also tapping on a user’s avatar will take you to the user’s profile.
On switching my data connection, I got an update notification from Google Play Store and upon updating, voila! There was my new (or rather updated) app, Twitter for Android version 3.3, smooth, sleek…
There are also tweaked notifications. I can now choose which of my following I want to be getting updates from and easily subscribe so that I am notified of their moves on the social networking site. Okay, I can now spy legally. All I need to do is turn on notifications for tweets from any user through the action button on their profile and wait for the updates to hit my notification bar.
Twitter search on the app has also been refined to give a great experience. The auto complete feature for usernames works like charm.
The official announcement of the release of Twitter for Android 3.3 made through Twitter’s official blog, states that these features may not be immediately to users in all locations and will roll out in due course.
I have heard talk from my iOS brothers that they also got some Twitter love and even an extra feature: events. They can view events blab bla bla. Whichever of the two platforms you are on, enjoy the updates.
PS: Some few questions that I have been asking myself
- Does anyone realize that seemingly Twitter has forgotten about Tweetdeck? Even as Twitter concentrates all its energies on bringing a unified experience to all platforms with its official app, it should not forget Tweetdeck for Android which has been very popular but has never seen an update since Twitter’s acquisition of Tweetdeck. The desktop client got an update and has good blue look, the same I want ported to the Android app.
- When are we getting Tweetbot on Android? It’s the best third party Twitter app in the Apple App Store and its time it popped up in the Google Play Store. Sometimes it is hard being an Android fanboy, but we’ll wait the same way we waited for Instagram, Flipboard, Draw Something and Temple Run.
Update to Twitter 3.3 here.
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