I had the pleasure to attend Connections 2010, ExactTarget‘s user conference, and hear Dick Costolo (Twitter’s COO) speak about the changes happening to Twitter over the next couple of weeks. If you haven’t heard already…. Twitter is rolling out a new layout to the website with increased functionality and more user support.

Screen shot of New Twitter Courtesy of TechCrunch

According to Dick over 70% of Twitter users still use the website to send, receive, and interact with tweets and other users. Even though the stat has been touted around the web (for at least six months) it is hard for me to comprehend actually using Twitter.com. I have been an avid application user (Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, and CoTweet) for the past two years and it is highly unlikely I will move over to Twitter.com…. however the functionality is pretty sweet.

Laura Fitton (founder of OneForty – the Twitter application network) was nice enough to show me the functionality of the “New Twitter” while we were chatting in Indianapolis on Wednesday. In terms of increased support for your network… it is absolutely awesome. Twitter has taken top level functionality and dove deep. Could we say Facebook and LinkedIn were Twitter’s muse? Probably.

LinkedIn is powerful because it shows you the depth of your network and Facebook brings you a multitude of functionality to share information, video, pictures, and… basically… your life. Twitter is taking the “follower” to an entirely new level by showing the user a break down of their network… three layers deep.

Twitter is becoming a one stop destination for content and we could be witnessing an actual Facebook competitor.

Other posts about New Twitter: