• The Telegraph, Wednesday, May 30, 2012 11:41 AM

Though a highly technical endeavor, achieving faster load times can do more for a Web site’s success than any creative or design element. As such, Twitter has reengineered its site so that tweets will load five times faster. “The overhaul will also prepare the microblogging service for the next generation of Web browsers by laying the ground for more interactive features,” The Telegraph reports.

In fact, as Twitter engineer Dan Webb explains in a blog post: “This new framework will help us rapidly develop new Twitter features, take advantage of new browser technology, and ultimately provide the best experience to as many people as possible.” The changes will also do away with the so-called "hashbang" symbol in its page addresses. “The ‘#!’ symbol in Twitter URLs was used as to tell Web browsers to fetch and render tweets requested by the user, but now much of that work will be handled by Twitter’s own servers,” The Telegraph explains.

The improvements were made after engineers investigated the “time to first tweet” that the Twitter Web site delivered. This statistic, based on a sample of users, measured how long between clicking on a link on Twitter.com and tweets appearing on-screen.

Read the whole story at The Telegraph »