Twitter users who checked their Followers today were treated to an on-again/off-again look at a very nice new interface for managing followers. Here’s a screen shot:

You can toggle between a “List” view which is similar to the old interface, and an “Expanded” view. In the Expanded view, in a single glance, you can see the person’s avatar, screen name, “real” name, location, and, get this, their latest tweet! In either view, there are two drop down menus within each profile. The left-hand menu allows you to follow the person back if you have not already done so. The right-hand has several features, including the ability to send the person a Direct Message (DM), Follow, Block, and a new one, to “Mention” them in a tweet. It’s strange that “Follow” is in both menus which defies conventional wisdom regarding user interface design.

Let’s hope the new design is here to stay. I like it!

Update in response to @QualityFrog’s comments:

First, I really appreciate that you took the time to evaluate the new user interface and to comment here. That’s what “conversation” is all about. I agree that I was “taken in” by the clean graphical design. Twitter is so hokey and its UI is so cumbersome, inconsistent and unreliable that I saw the new Followers and Following pages as the first sign that maybe they finally have a professional designer working on improving the user experience.

Many people have complained about your item 3, the inability to see who is following you on the list of people you follow. This seems to be the biggest failure of the new UI. Twitter does seem to take other features away every time it adds them.

Overall, for the way I use Twitter, it is a much better design. I no longer manage my existing followers list “manually.” I rarely add someone proactively. From time to time I use Mutuality to do a mass unfollow of all the people on my followers list who aren’t following back. I have the ability in Mutuality to then quickly add back the select few that I follow who I don’t care whether they follow me back, such as celebrities, one-way news feeds, and politicians. This method is not for everyone, but since it is how I manage followers, I failed to notice the effect of the new UI in this regard.

I haven’t blocked anyone recently so I didn’t notice that people who are blocked still show up, avatars and all. This is a serious fail. What it means is that Twitter is forcing us to see pornographic images, and that is insane!

I’m not experiencing the need for an additional click to block. Twitter has always required confirmation of a block.

Thanks for bringing these issues to my attention. In my haste to beat Mashable with a post about the new UI, I didn’t have the time to really hammer on it as I should have. I appreciate any additional comments anyone has on love or hatred of the new interface.

Tags: Twitter, Followers, new user interface