Twitter gets more forceful about signing up logged out users

Twitter gets more proactive about signing up logged out users

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Martin SFP Bryant

Founder

Martin SFP Bryant is the founder of UK startup newsletter PreSeed Now and technology and media consultancy Big Revolution. He was previously (show all) Martin SFP Bryant is the founder of UK startup newsletter PreSeed Now and technology and media consultancy Big Revolution. He was previously Editor-in-Chief at TNW.

Twitter has added a pop-up message to profile pages when viewed by logged-out users.

The message allows users to enter a username, email address and password to sign up right away. It even lets you auto-follow the account you’re currently looking at and three similar accounts from the same interface. In the case of our The Next Web account in the example below, it’s grouped in our @TNWapple Twitter channel as well as two relating to Twitter’s own Tweetdeck service.

While this may be a little annoying for anyone who just wants to read the latest updates from their favourite celebrities, it’s seemingly designed as a way to convert those casual visitors into active users as painlessly as possible.

Those active users, of course, will be more likely to hang around and see ads in their own timeline when the expected feature rolls out, helping to generate revenue for the company.