What the new Twitter means for media

By Cory Bergman 

Updated: At its first press event at its company HQ, Twitter unveiled a revamped website that includes embedded video, photos and maps. The new site will start rolling out today.

The new Twitter.com features a split-screen experience — an endless scroll of tweets on the left, and expanded content on the right, included embedded media from 16 new partners like YouTube, Vimeo, Ustream, TwitPic, Flickr and Justin.tv.

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Here’s a promotional video which provides a demo of the new site, and you can see a few screenshots here. In a nutshell, Twitter is making the jump from a pure platform to a rich media destination.

“Twitter is too hard, it needs to be easier,” said CEO Evan Williams leading up to the unveiling. “You don’t have to tweet to use Twitter anymore than you need to create a website to use the web.” In other words, you can use Twitter solely as a way to discover content that’s relevant to you — or as Twitter puts it, “a real-time information network.”

That moves Twitter.com closer to a content destination, similar to Facebook. “We’re really excited about the potential for monetization,” Ev said, explaining how promoted tweets can carry video with them. “We’ll probably be displaying more promoted tweets.” Twitter didn’t elaborate on what the new features could mean for media companies that want to distribute and monetize their own video in an embedded experience (outside YouTube, which already shares revenue with publishers).

The net effect of today’s revamp will likely bring more casual users and advertisers to Twitter.com, which means Twitter is shifting gears from that small startup into a power player in the content world. For media companies, that means the priority to engage with users via Twitter will only increase. Twitter promises enhanced API functionality for media partners to take advantage of some of the new features.

What are your impressions of the revamped site?

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