New Twitter is here! Hurrah!
Not for all of us, admittedly, but it’s getting there…
So what’s new about it?
Listing all the awesome new features that are now available to some of its users is too easy and to be honest, a lot of people have done that already.
Where can we add value?
Here at 1000heads, we like to help people.
Be that through offering real world shops easier ways to talk about their social selves or even just recommending best practice for that most unused of social spaces; the twitter background.
We’ve done this before.
However, what with #NewTwitter on the scene, all that hard work and stunning imagery we advised back in January is going to waste; it’s now suddenly hidden behind Twitter’s brand new, super-slick and super-fast web interface.
Damn.
This means change. But do not fear, change is GOOD! 🙂
Example:
Our old background, on #NewTwitter, looked like this –
No. Neither can we. Rubbish right? Agreed. Which is why we’ve changed it.
Now it looks like this –
Ta-dah!
What do you think?
We’re off to tell our friends and clients to make use of this window ASAP and to get to work on changing their Twitter background sharpish.
Perhaps you should too 🙂
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EDIT 1:
If you want to create your own, then we recommend graphic that has a 20pixel gap at the top and a 48pixel width for the side. We’d also recommend, for now at least, that you create something that works on both #newtwitter and old.
EDIT 2:
If you’ve updated your background because of this post, then please do leave a comment with a link. We’d love to know who’s not only benefited from this blog but also – more importantly – exactly how creative our readers can get with such limited space!
Best of luck 🙂
Hey James
This is really helpful. I've never had a background mysrlf, but I do think this style you've suggested looks a lot better and I might take the plunge and set one up.
Thanks, as always, for being ahead of the curve
Scott
James Whatley Reply:
September 28th, 2010 at 05:20
Kind words Scott, thanks for dropping by. When we putting the post together late last night we were surprised that so many of our friends hadn't updated yet… (ahem – our mate Chris for example) …so yes, hopefully this will help a few folk 🙂
Cheers,
James
Scott Gould Reply:
September 28th, 2010 at 05:38
LOL – I'll ping him about it later!
Hey James – My background was the first thing I thought about when #newtwitter was “released” to me yesterday.
The challenge here is not just with the width, but the height as well. Those who use a notebook or netbook mostly will have a larger resolution, so you will have even less space to promote yourself.
Now why didn't Twitter sell a big block on their new UI where you could customize it and add an image map as well?!
I'll let you know when I get my new background in place…
mp/m
James Whatley Reply:
September 28th, 2010 at 09:16
Agreed. We're aiming to mix up the text at the top of our graphic here and there, just for a spot of fun really…
Looking forward to seeing what you make of yours 🙂
J
Mike Maddaloni - @thehotiron Reply:
September 28th, 2010 at 12:43
Ok – I made a first pass on it, as I have better things to do, but was sick of seeing only 1 side of my face on Twitter!
mp/m
James Whatley Reply:
September 28th, 2010 at 12:45
Perfect! 😀
Thanks for the helpful tips! It gave me inspiration to change mine so I went ahead and did it. I went for the more simple look this time.
James Whatley Reply:
September 28th, 2010 at 17:41
Awesome! Glad to hear it Rande, good work – 🙂
If you pick the right colour scheme you could also have your logo as a 'watermark underneath the righthand panel. You need to ensure the design has a high contrast ratio to work properly
Very neat implementation. Would recommend it for those who live and die by twitter, all too often you see backgrounds that just don't scale well with browser re-sizing. Bringing a little professionalism to twitter can't hurt.