Twitter Redesign Launches With Michella Obama And More

Twitter is going to get a whole lot more Facebook-like in its design, the short-messaging social network has revealed, with a new profile page look already rolling out for celebrities like Michelle Obama and Zac Efron. The new pages feature a much larger header photo than the previous layout, as well as a larger profile photo, plus there are more ways to control what individual tweets people see when they first visit.

To that end, there's a combination of manual and automatic control over how tweets appear. Twitter users will be able to pin a select tweet to the top of their timeline, but the site will also automatically increase the size of certain tweets if they're more popular in terms of engagement like retweets and favorites.

In Zac Efron's new profile, for instance, shown below, the top message has been pinned, while more recent tweets continue chronologically underneath.

Meanwhile, there are also new filters for profile visitors. Three views – tweets, tweets with photos or video, or tweets and replies – are offered to organize the timeline.

The new layout is strikingly similar, at least at first glance, to Facebook's profile pages, and seems to indicate that Twitter is hoping to be seen more as a true social network rather than just a place to fire off quick messages.

Twitter says the new UI is rolling out from today, though only for select high-profile users. Everyone else will get the updated look over "the coming weeks."