Twitter ha a new welcome mat for new users

Twitter pleased Wall Street with its latest user numbers, but it wants many, many more. How can it get them? One tactic: A new way to greet first-time users who show up at Twitter.com. Twitter has freshened up its sign up page and sign up process for newbies. If this seems like a small thing to you, product manager Christian Oestlien is here to tell you otherwise. It’s a process that took “months,” he said, and is the company’s “first major update in 3 years.”

Twitter said early this year that it would do more to help first-timers follow people, and it’s now making good on its word. The social network has just revamped its sign-up process to help you tailor those first follows to your interest. Rather than simply toss out a bunch of suggestions, Twitter now asks you to choose topics you like (such as music or technology) and offers recommendations to match. You’ll also see recent tweets from those accounts, so you’ll have a better sense of whether or not that celebrity or news outlet is really a good fit. The new sign-up system isn’t perfect. By default, it will automatically have you following every suggestion; you have to deselect the people you don’t want to watch. Still, it could give you a much gentler introduction to the service by showing people you’re more likely to care about — Twitter is hoping that you’ll see enough interesting activity to stick around. The company obviously has some financial incentives for helping you out, but it’s hard to object to a bigger, better welcome mat.