My Mean

Twitter released new mobile apps for Android and iOS Tuesday. Main features include “expanded tweets,” better search, more fine-grained push notifications, and enhanced event support. In short, the update adds a lot more multimedia support, and more quickly delivers the information that’s truly important to you. The most interesting feature is probably beefed-up support for push notifications tied to particular accounts. So, for example, you could set up a push notification for your local news channel, a feed like @Emergency_In_SF, or any other source that you want to monitor with vigilance. The other notable upgrade is the ability to expand tweets within the app. Expanded tweets let users play videos, read article summaries and experience other rich media directly in tweets themselves. So, rather than just seeing a link to a story or a video when you tap a tweet, you’ll be able to directly see the pertinent information without leaving the app. This function is already available on the web (and mobile web) but now Twitter is adding app support too. It’s a clever way to keep people in-app, and now MLB, Etsy and Kickstarter join a growing list of partners who provide this rich content. Tuesday’s update also adds event support and better search autocomplete. The former is Twitter’s attempt to be the backchannel go-to-discussion forum during events like NASCAR, while the latter just lets you accomplish what you’d like faster than you previously could.