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Twitter starts rolling out Facebook-like features
Twitter showed off some handy-dandy new website features a while ago and we chuckled because they make the micro-blogging service resemble Facebook a bit. Well, it's time to stop laughing, because those new features are starting to roll out — whether we like them or not.
The new features I'm talking about are the "@Username" and "Activity" tabs which will appear on Twitter.com. (Yes, your third-party Twitter apps are safe from these changes for now.)
The @Username tab will show you any Twitter activity that's related to you — such as who started following you, who replied to you, and which of your tweets which were favorites or retweeted. The Activity tab, on the other hand, will show the same information — but for people you follow. (Meaning that you can see whom they started following, which tweets they marked as favorites, and so on.)
Sounds a bit like Facebook's News Feed and Ticker, no?
Of course, unlike those Facebook features, Twitter's @Username and Activity streams aren't in your face. Instead they reside in tabs which you can choose to ignore. In other words: They're not affecting (or cluttering) the Twitter homepage with more data than you can handle. Only time will tell whether that approach will keep Twitter's users from complaining about the changes (as the Facebook crowd tends to).
A lot of Twitter users are seeing these new tabs already, but don't cry if you're not one of them yet — new features like this tend to be rolled out gradually.
Related stories:
- You can share photos on Twitter via text messages
- Twitter tests 'Top News' and 'Top People' in search results
- Twitter makes sending tweets to Facebook easier
Want more tech news, silly puns, or amusing links? You'll get plenty of all three if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.
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