Jack Dorsey, one of Twitter’s co-founders, sent the first “tweet” on March 21, 2006, but Twitter itself was only launched publicly in July 2006. Like the tortoise, Twitter was slow to pick up speed and it wasn’t until the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference in 2007 where Twitter won the Web award that it started to move more like the hare.

Today, Twitter is ranked as one of the 15 most visited websites worldwide therefore it came as no surprise when they announced a complete redesign of their website this week.  Many believe that Twitter’s reasoning behind this redesign is to better control the user experience when visiting the Twitter website itself.

For those well versed in the language and features of Twitter, the website itself is often a last resort destination given its limited functionality and constant display of the dreaded “FailWhale” (a default image telling users that Twitter is over capacity). Instead, users downloaded desktop clients such as Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Seesmic and mobile applications such as Tweetie and Ubertwitter.

So what makes the “New Twitter” so special and why should those in the real estate industry pay special attention?

First things first, the new Twitter is being compared to a Facebook page. Users can still browse tweets in the typical timeline fashion but now (pay attention because this is the important part) links, photos, videos, profiles and other content will open up in new panes to the right of the timeline. No longer will users have to leave Twitter to view a video from Youtube or a picture from Flickr. Media tweets will be tagged as such with their corresponding icons and users can simply click on them to pull up photos or watch live and recorded videos.

That being said, the important thing for realtors and those in the real estate industry to note is that Twitter has become even more engaging than it previously was. For those of you with blogs who push your content to Twitter (something you absolutely should be doing by the way), you will need to embed more photos and videos within your posts to make it more inviting for Twitter users.

The new Twitter is set to roll out over the next several weeks so keep your eyes open and let me know what you think!