• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, July 9, 2012

Twitter’s iPhone app is getting a major overhaul in the near future, according to details which leaked over the weekend on the App Store and were first reported by 9to5mac.com. The new 4.3 version of the app will include improved notifications, search, and interactivity, as well as some “power user” features, which should make it as easy to use as the Web site.

Among the new features, content previews, videos and images will be visible in tweets linking to other Web sites, while tweets about “selected events” will be highlighted and curated by Twitter. The “Connect” tab will include autocomplete search features; the “Discover” tab can alert users when new content becomes available; and users can choose to receive “push” notifications for tweets from specific people. Overall the notification process should be less intrusive.

Finally, users will be able to go to someone’s profile simply by tapping on their avatar, and the app will carry the new Twitter logo.

There’s no question mobile will play a key role in Twitter’s future growth. Last month Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said that traffic on the microblogging network had reached 400 million tweets per day, produced by 140 million active monthly users, 60% of whom access the site via iPhones or Android devices. Costolo further revealed that on some days Twitter’s mobile ad revenues now surpass its Internet ad revenues.

Meanwhile the Twitter upgrades come not long after Facebook took a battering in its stock market debut, in part because analysts voiced strong doubts about its ability to monetize mobile users. After Facebook’s debacle, Twitter (which faces its own ad revenue problems, even as it is said to be planning an IPO in the next year or so) will be sure to focus on mobile as a key growth area as well as an indicator of the company’s overall potential in the eyes of many analysts.