Almost exactly one month ago, Twitter unveiled a completely redesigned and re-engineered version of their service, which they called “New Twitter”. While it started rolling out that day to some users, Twitter was quick to note that it would be weeks before everyone got it. Sure enough, today, four weeks later, now everyone has it.
Twitter made the announcement on their blog this morning and also dropped a few other interesting tidbits. First of all, they note that they now have 160 million users. Second, they note that the new Twitter is natively available in six languages. And third, they note that while you still have a choice as to whether or note you want to use New Twitter or the old version, in the next few weeks, the old version will be no more and everyone will have to use New Twitter.
That last bit will undoubtedly be a hard pill for some to swallow, but it seems as if the reaction to New Twitter has been mostly positive, which Twitter calls out today. We noted the same thing a couple weeks ago when Twitter VP of Product Jason Goldman joined us at our TechCrunch Disrupt event to talk about the new version of the service. At that time, Goldman noted that New Twitter was rolled out to about half of the user base, and even with nearly 100 million people using it, there wasn’t a huge backlash. That’s interesting since every time Facebook changes the smallest thing, a huge backlash ensues.
The next question is when Twitter will cross the 200 million user barrier? Co-founder Evan Williams stated the other day that Twitter was targeting a billion users eventually — a number which even Facebook is only halfway to. Internal document initially had Twitter hoping to reach 1 billion users by 2013, and Twitter is actually ahead of the user-growth pace laid out in those documents.