Twitter is changing its site to make it easier to use and navigate, and to give more context to posts that people see on its website. The changes will add a variety of informative panels to supplement the rapid exchange of information that's always taking place on the site.

For example, Twitter users often post links to pictures and videos. The new site will pull those onto the page so that people don't have to leave to view that content. Twitter has accomplished this in part through partnerships with companies that provide these services.

The new site will also provide contextual information for tweets, giving users related posts, for example. It will also make it easier to see profile information about who has posted a tweet without navigating away from the page.

Though the individual changes may seem small, together they suggest a focus on the aesthetics of the site that Twitter historically hasn't had time for. The site has spent most of its life trying to keep its head above water and prevent crashes from being too frequent.

The changes also seem likely to make people spend more time on the Twitter home page, rather than navigating away from it constantly. This could affect the group of applications that have grown up to supplement Twitter, in some cases undermining their functionality. It's also possible that the changes will make advertisements on Twitter more valuable. They could be coupled more closely to other content, and there might be more opportunities to present them.

A small group of users already has the new Twitter, and the company expects to add everyone in slowly over the next few weeks.

Twitter was late to the game in developing its first business model, but has now come up with another one. The company is hoping that its new @earlybird account will generate revenue while helping its users find deals. Announced yesterday, @earlybird is a Twitter account that will repost time-sensitive Twitter-exclusive deals from selected advertisers' Twitter accounts.

Advertisers pay Twitter for posts to @earlybird, but the company says it plans to be selective about which posts it will choose to accept. Users interested in receiving the deals can choose to follow the account, and people will only see the ads in their timelines if they follow @earlybird, or if a friend retweets a message from that account.

Just 18 hours after the tweet announcing its existence, @earlybird already had more than 13,000 followers. It's a clever move and true to Twitter's ideals for the company to focus on showing advertisements to those who volunteer to receive them.

Twitter says it's currently investigating similar, targeted accounts, such as ones that offer location-based deals or deals within certain areas of interest such as music.

LegitScript/KnujOn

82% of drug ads on Yahoo lead to illegitimate Internet pharmacies, according to the second report from spam-monitoring group KnujOn and online pharmacy verifier LegitScripts. At the beginning of this month, these groups released a study suggesting that most of the pharmacy ads appearing on Bing lead users to fraudulent online pharmacies.

By searching Yahoo for terms like 'generic Viagra' or 'pain meds,' the researchers were able to order several prescription drugs without prescriptions (a violation of federal law) from various countries. The report lists details on 10 ads which led to these 'rogue' pharmacies.

In a press release issued today along with the second report, KnujOn founder Garth Bruen said,

"Like Bing, Yahoo! has been infiltrated by sophisticated illicit operations that are taking advantage of consumer need and gullibility."

The group states that better online pharmacy verification systems are needed to minimize the sales of counterfeit drugs and addictive drugs without prescriptions.