In case you missed it, Twitter announced an update to their mobile site today and, while David’s been toying around with the look and feel, I took some time to analyse the key differences between this new (and much needed), refreshed version of mobile.twitter.com and Dabr.

First, let’s take a look at the new mobile twitter page:

They’ve really made an effort on a brand level, you do feel like you’re using twitter (which is a good thing), and they’ve also introduced their own ‘mentions, favourites, direct message’ filtering. The ‘buttons’ for these filters are a good size and would work well on a touch device, however – although this works OK in practice – there is still a lot more you can do here.

Compare the above to Dabr (in touch mode) and – smaller buttons aside – you get a much richer experience

The user page for @BenjaminEllis (my example here), now displays his URL, location, friends, favourites and lists. In fact, the only thing that is missing from Dabr at this point is the ‘Get Texts’ option that is on the twitter screen further up the page.

David and I have had many conversations about how we improve the experience for Dabr users and are constantly trying to refine the site and are very careful about what changes we do and do not make. It’s a hard balancing act; trying to maximise the overall usability out of such small screen estate while also trying to keep things as simple as possible and – while we applaud Twitter for finally getting their act together – we still think that there are a number of areas where Dabr wins out.

When you see the two side by side, you might be tempted to agree -

What do you think?

This next grab, originally taken to show off the differences between mobile twitter search (not currently working!) and Dabr search (with ‘save as default search’ option), also goes some way to explaining our commitment to mid-low level handsets.

You can find the ‘normal phone’ option in your settings tab..

Remember twitter: not everyone has a smartphone.

Your thoughts, comments and feedback are welcome –
Thanks for dropping by..