Did Sean Parker Just Get Access To A New, New Twitter? And Compare It To Facebook?

Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook and one of its early proponents, was tweeting today about what may just be a “new #NewTwitter”. But this Facebook afficionado’s words weren’t kind to the new layout (or perhaps bug, experiment or something else altogether).

As a disclaimer, I haven’t seen the new layout that Parker apparently experienced for a few moments this morning, so I can’t be sure whether it was in fact a completely new redesign or just a bug that he experienced for a short time.

However, Parker (@sparker) himself did get a chance to comment on the new Twitter in a series of tweets, several of which are reproduced below in reverse chronological order:

I’m really curious about what Parker was seeing. It’s likely that he had temporary access to the new Username and Activity tabs that are slowly being rolled out to replace the @mentions and retweets folder on Twitter.com.

That would explain Parker’s description that it makes it more difficult to track the volume of retweets, and his comparison of the new Activity tab to Facebook’s newsfeed – it does share a resemblance, as you can see in the screenshots here.

Still, it’s interesting that Parker is clearly such an adamant Facebook supporter (even while he is using Twitter). He asks whether Twitter has Facebook envy, later tweeting “everything doesn’t NEED to be a FEED,” clearly insinuating that Twitter is copying Facebook by making their tabs more in-line with Facebook’s newsfeed.

What do you think? Did Parker get a short glimpse into Twitter’s new Activity and Username feeds? And is his analysis that Twitter is moving close to Facebook right? Let us know in the comments below.

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