Critics slam Twitter's updated iPad app

Critics and analysts have slammed micro blogging platform Twitter's updated iPad application, calling it a step back for the social networking site.

Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo recently announced the changes on an American TV channel.

'Today you can download the new Twitter for iPad. We've rebuilt the app from the ground up to make it fast, beautiful and easy to use,' the firm said.

'Twitter for iPad brings you closer to what's happening all over the world, and makes it easy to keep up with the news you need to read, the photos you want to see and the people you follow,' it added.

The previous version of the iPad app was designed by Tweetie founder Loren Brichter who left Twitter a year ago, so a redesign was not unexpected, the Telegraph reports.

According to the paper, many critics have dismissed the iPad app's new look.

'Nearly everything that was cool about Brichter's design has been ripped out, and replaced by a generic timeline that looks as though it were designed for an Android smartphone ,' the paper quoted Wade Rouch of technology blog Xconomy, as saying.

'The sliding panels that made navigating to tweeted content such a pleasure are gone, replaced by an awkward system in which tweets first 'expand' (on the first tap) and then disappear,' Rouch added.

According to the report, tech site Mashable's Emily Price criticised the navigation system on the updated app.

'When you load up Twitter's iPad update for the first time, chances are you're going to think there's something wrong,' Price said.

'The updated version of the iPad app abandons Twitter's card-style layout, where tapping on a tweet would make it swipe in from the right side of the screen, for a much more space-filled design. Your navigation is limited to tapping on the four tabs on the side of the screen,' Price added.