Twitter redesigns
              ^^

Update: apparently if you swipe up, it shows you DMs. So once you touch that button, you're probably going to some screen, even if you don't want to.

I can imagine the product meeting now: "You're getting rid of the DM icon?" "Yeah, but we'll figure out a way users can get to it directly."

Yes, it's true that under "Me" is a "Switch Accounts" button that does the exact same thing, and that's fine, but the idea of implementing swipe-left-on-Me seems to go completely against Apple's HIG and the entire notion of intuitively discovering functionality.

Also, not a fan of the wasted space on the sides of the tweet feed. However, the new web design looks great.

In most situations, people use Timeline mentions to achieve the same thing, but without the secrecy and limitations direct messages introduce. I don't have a problem with this at all, frankly. It leaves a big opening for 3rd party clients to fill the gap, while repositioning the Twitter for iPhone app as the best choice for the mainstream Twitter user (which it wasn't previously but is as of 4.0).

It may not be in your best interests, but I think it's a smart move that's in the long term interests of the service. Twitter, from the beginning, has always been about learning from the community and observing how people use the service rather than telling them how to use the service. This is just one more lesson learned from actual users.

The rest of the UI changes are quite painful, though. I support the previously discussed changes, but overall the 4.0 update is a regression in terms of the UI.

EDIT - I write all that, then I see this in my timeline: "Twitter for iPhone pro-tip: swipe up on Me for DMs and swipe left on Me to switch accounts." I guess they found a compromise. Actually, that's pretty amazing. Nobody else has to think about DMs if they don't want to, but power users still get instant access. Great job, Twitter.

Not the most discoverable gesture, but it's there, though it's only a little weirder than "swipe across tweet for secondary actions" (though on that topic I'll miss using that to quickly save links to Instapaper).

I don't have the time or enough things I'd like to say in order for it to warrant getting a blog, but not everything I'd like to say fits into 140 characthers either.

It would actually relatively easy for Twitter to fix this issue. Just do it like Reddit does for self-posts. Simply enable people to embed text the same way it lets people embed pictures and videos.

It solves all the major issues Twitter is having - people will stop shortening their tweets so much that they lose their intended meaning/readablity, Google+ stops having a major content advantage due to no characther limit and the feed won't get cluttered by walls of text (unlike Google+).

I can follow 200+ people only because I know that they'll be forced to be concise in what they say and how they say it. Google+ felt unwieldily at a half-dozen people because at some point each of them would succumb to the temptation to write a 1600+ word post, and no matter how interesting I found them, it turned the act of surveying my timeline from a nearly effortless, quick glance experience into a depressing exercise in reminding myself that there were endless reams of text I was falling behind on and could never hope to find the time to catch up with.

I have the same problem with RSS readers; beyond some very low limit, it becomes dispiriting to see how much stuff I will never find the time to keep up with, so I stop using the app. Twitter doesn't have this effect on me precisely because it forces everyone to be brief and digestible.

A "New Twitter" in which I have to curate my timeline down from 200 to 6 is a Twitter I just stop using.

As I said - clutter in the timeline wouldn't be an issue like it is on Google+, since the extra "embedded text" would be hidden by default, just like on Reddit.

Your "self post" style idea with hidden "embedded text" would only really force people to be concise with what effectively become the "titles" of their rambling, hidden, posts. It does nothing to solve any of the problems created when you lift the arbitrary conciseness limit; the manner in which people express ideas gets flabby when they have infinite space in which to express them.

I don't want a timeline full of titles to posts I'm rarely going to click into. That's a big decrease in the value Twitter is providing to me.

I disagree that this is a problem. The content of a tweet should be a short communication, not a diatribe. I think that's the non-SMS-based reason for the 140 character limit. It forces people to think about what is important for such a small space.

I like your idea of embedding text extension into a tweet, but I think this would be abused to the point where Twitter would turn into something more akin to Tumblr. This meshes well with your point about having more to say than fits in 140 characters, but less than an actual blog. Tumblr is more of an elastic-use platform, whereby one can post Twitter-length messages, a few paragraphs, or an essay. I don't think Twitter intends to compete in that market. Length isn't their goal, but succinct is.

Not a safe bet by any means.

Hate the new iPhone font/margin choices. Text seems smaller, fainter with no setting to enlarge. New gray margins noticeably waste precious space that could be communication.

And making things tappable/highlightable? The tableview isn't scrolling when you're tapping. Detecting a tap and performing some calculations to determine which text run the tap falls on cannot cause scrolling performance to go down.

You'll pry my tweet bot from my cold, dead hands though.

Interesting technique, are they trying to drive downloads of the mobile client or are they using "people who can/will download the latest mobile client" as a proxy to select power users to test the new interface on?

I am not a power user. Perhaps they found that more people tweet from mobile devices that is why they doing it this way?

2. Connect

3. Discover

4. Me