Twitter Introduces Hovercards to Make Twitter More Social
Over the past few months Twitter has made several changes such as the introduction of Lists which means that we see tweets from people we don’t directly follow. This annoyed me for quite some time as I was never really bothered to see who the person was, but still had them congesting my Twitter page. Now, Twitter aims to solve that problem by introducing ‘Hovercards’.
This means, that when you hover your cursor over someone username or avatar, information will be displayed about them as well as other options such as Reply, DM or Retweet. All of which don’t load another page, it’s done there and then.
“On any timeline, as its namesake suggests, Hovercards are cards which appear when you hover over a username or avatar. The cards display additional information about the person and allow you to interact with them while staying within the context of your page.” say Twitter on their blog. ”
“One way we’ve found these cards to be useful is to find out more about retweeted people and follow them right there. You can also see more information with an expanded view of the card. Sending direct messages to people you follow will also be possible with Hovercards so you can interact with tweeters without having to move off the page.”
This feature is currently in the process of being rolled out so we won’t all have it right away. However, within the coming days and weeks it will be the standard for all Twitter users.
1 Comment
This is something that probably should have been added a really long time ago. We’re going to have some hover elements on the new version of our site that we’re relaunching in a couple weeks.
I think it just adds to usability for the user. Provide them an easy way to find the information that is valuable to them.
I don’t have this yet on my Twitter account but at this point I’m not sure how important it is. I don’t spend much time on the actual Twitter site when managing my account.