Here Comes the New Twitter.com

Twitter has announced that it’s rolling out a new version of its web interface. Some users will start seeing the new look as soon as tonight, though the company says on its blog that it “will roll out as a preview over the next several weeks.”

News of the company’s plan to integrate multimedia into the stream leaked out earlier this afternoon, but we’ve now learned that the redesign goes much further than that. The new interface resembles that of a far more sophisticated web app (as well as Twitter’s recently released iPad app).

The multimedia partnerships we hinted at earlier today extend to 16 different companies: DailyBooth, DeviantART, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, TwitVid, Ustream, Vimeo, yfrog, and YouTube.

Much has been made in recent months of Twitter’s move into areas previously owned by third-party applications. Today’s announcement will no doubt renew such discussion, with many of the best features of Twitter clients like Tweetie, Seesmic Desktop, and TweetDeck now becoming a part of the default Twitter interface. As we also pointed out earlier this afternoon, it also makes Twitter feel a bit more like Facebook.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams prefaced his announcement by mentioning that Twitter.com is already far and away the most popular way for accessing the microblogging service, commanding 78% of unique users (which the company defines as “Of all the people who logged into their Twitter account during the month, what percentage did so via each service.”). Combined with Twitter’s growing need to serve up impressions to advertisers, it’s certainly no surprise that the company is now looking to keep people more engaged on its website.

Stay tuned to Mashable for additional coverage and analysis of the new interface. In the meantime, check out Twitter’s video demo and some early screenshots:

Additional Coverage

• The New Twitter is an Attack on All Desktop Apps
• The Facebookification of Twitter
• Twitter Changes the Default New User Avatar [PIC]
• LIVE: Twitter’s Big Announcement
• Twitter Bringing Photos and Videos to the Stream

Video

Screenshots

Home Screen

The new home screen has a wider two-panel interface and is visually similar to the Twitter for iPad app.

Twitter Profile Page

The new Twitter user page is accessible from a selection at the top bar or by visiting a user's page directly.

The new profile layout contains easy access to favorites, lists, followers and who a user is following. Again, this adds functionality similar to what Twitter for the iPhone and Twitter for the iPad offer, but in the browser.

Mini Profile

Clicking on a user name brings up a mini profile option that shows easy to access stats about a user, an easy way to follow them, add them to a list, send them a message and view recent tweets.

User Stream

You can also view more tweets from a particular user by selecting their tweet. The second panel houses their other tweets.

Inline Video

Searching for "youtube" brings up a list of tweets in the left panel, but selecting the right panel shows an embedded YouTube clip inline the tweet itself.

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