Here at Twitter Support, we’re always looking for ways to help people better understand and find value on Twitter. Our few dozen support agents, including myself, work daily with Twitter’s user-base to help enhance and improve their experience of the site. “Twitter Tips” – a series of blog posts aimed at helping you get the most out of Twitter – is an extension of that effort. We’ll explain features that average Twitterers may not know about and open doors to discovery on our site. Through these tips, we hope to enhance your experience of our product. Here it goes!

Tip #1: Browse accounts by interest to quickly discover and follow meaningful sources.
People and sources you care about are on Twitter – you just have to find them. Not always as easy as it seems? Twitter's got several tools that can help. One that we think everyone can appreciate is the lists of suggested users by topic.

Let's say this guy we know named Mark joins Twitter so he can get a quick snapshot of the news each day. To immediately find some of the top news sources on Twitter, he clicks the "Browse Interests" link below his “Who to Follow” suggestions, and is presented with a list of categories. By selecting "News," he quickly finds and follows @TheEconomist, @kingsthings (Larry King), and the New York Times' photography account @nytimesphoto. He's off to a great start, and right away his home timeline begins to fill up with links to news articles, photos of the day, and more. Mission accomplished!

To browse lists of accounts related to your interests, just look for the "Browse interests" button on your new Twitter homepage. Follow whomever strikes your fancy because, awesomely, you can always unfollow them later if it turns out they're not tweeting what you expected.

User research typically is focused on how an individual uses a computer or device. Alternatively, you have the classic focus group comprised of strangers. The former can be too limiting and the latter doesn’t represent how people actually (and truthfully) interact in real life.

With Twitter, observing how different deeply connected peer groups of people use the service is critical to understanding the true dynamics of use. To do this, we need to get out in the world and watch how groups like friends, co-workers, and enthusiasts use Twitter to get information and interact with each other.

We already had some great sessions with entrepreneurs in Montreal building a community among small businesses; members of New York City’s art scene sharing a world once confined inside museum walls; and, folks at @WhiteHouse and on Capitol Hill providing a view into the inner workings of government and how they use Twitter to demystify it.

Up next? Atlanta and Memphis, then west to Wichita, Denver, and Salt Lake City - with a whole bunch of stops in between. We’re doing this all out of an old RV and a shoe-string budget. Follow our adventures @OnTheRoad.

As of today, everyone who uses Twitter now has access to the new Twitter. Whether you’re just signing up today or you’ve been a user for years, this new experience is finally real for everyone – all 160 million of you – and in six languages to boot.

Since we announced the new Twitter four weeks ago, we've closely watched Tweets and user comments. We’ve received lots of great feedback that will help as we continue to make Twitter.com even better.

So while we still (and will always) have plenty of work to do, we’re pleased with the positive reaction so far. People are telling us that they love that we’ve kept the timeline simple while also providing a richer experience through the details pane. You can now dive deeper into a Tweet and see more details, like recent replies, the bios of other accounts mentioned in it, and photos and videos from media partners like Flickr, YouTube, USTREAM and yfrog. Watch this explanatory video to learn more about how to get the most of out of new Twitter. (Or, if you prefer a hip hop version, check out the fan video that @iamwill and team created.)

Not sure how to access the new Twitter? Check for the blue bar at the top of Twitter.com, and click on the yellow “Try it now!” button to give it a shot. You’ll be able to switch between both the old and new versions of Twitter for the next few weeks. After that, everyone will just use the new version.

So, you’re a baseball fan? Us too! In fact, there are tons of fans, teams, players and news sources sharing loads of useful baseball information right now as playoff fever spreads. And, spreading it is. From Roy Halladay’s no-hitter to Tim Lincecum’s 14-strike-out game last night, baseball related terms have been leading Twitter’s trending topic’s this week.

Here are some tips to help you find the best baseball sources on Twitter so you, too, can share in the experience.

By all accounts Twitter is on a roll. We've redesigned our web site to great user feedback. Our user and usage numbers are growing at a rapid clip all around the world. We’ve launched an early, but successful, monetization effort. And, many top engineers, product designers, sales people and other key folks have joined our quickly growing team.

In fact, there are 300 people working at Twitter today—compared to about 20 when I took the CEO job two years ago. Back then, people were creating about 1.25 million tweets a day—compared to 90 million today. In those same two years, we grew from 3 million registered users to more than 165 million today.

The challenges of growing an organization so quickly are numerous. Growing big is not success, in itself. Success to us means meeting our potential as a profitable company that can retain its culture and user focus while having a positive impact on the world. This is no small task. I frequently reflect on the type of focus that is required from everyone at Twitter to get us there.

This led to a realization as we launched the new Twitter. I am most satisfied while pushing product direction. Building things is my passion, and I’ve never been more excited or optimistic about what we have to build.

This is why I have decided to ask our COO, Dick Costolo, to become Twitter’s CEO. Starting today, I’ll be completely focused on product strategy.

When I insisted on bringing Dick into the COO role a year ago, I got a lot of questions from my board. But I knew Dick would be a strong complement to me, and this has proven to be the case. During his year at Twitter, he has been a critical leader in devising and executing our revenue efforts, while simultaneously and effectively making the trains run on time in the office. Dick can be even more effective at this now because Ali Rowghani, Adam Bain, Mike Abbott, Katie Stanton and Kevin Thau joined our leadership team this year and are having a big impact. Given Dick’s track record as a three-time successful CEO, I’m confident we can make this a smooth transition.

I’m extremely proud of how far Twitter has come in the last two years. And, I couldn’t be more excited about where our amazing team will take it next.

When we launched Promoted Tweets back in April, we said that we would be doing lots of experimenting and iterating, as is typical with everything else at Twitter. Since then, we’ve done and learned a lot – such as adding Promoted Trends to our suite of Promoted Products and making those products available to an ever-widening audience of users and advertisers.

Today, we’re entering a new phase in our efforts. We are launching Promoted Accounts, a new ad product that gives added value to Twitter users. We will also make our Promoted Products available through our partners for the first time.

Promoted Accounts
We’re launching Promoted Accounts as part of “Suggestions for You”, which suggests accounts that people don’t currently follow and may find interesting. Promoted Accounts helps introduce an even wider variety of accounts people may enjoy.

Promoted Accounts are suggested based on a user’s public list of whom they follow. When an advertiser promotes an account, Twitter’s algorithm looks at that account’s followers and determines other accounts that those users tend to follow. If a user follows some of those accounts, but not the advertiser’s account, then Twitter may recommend the advertiser’s Promoted Account to that user. For example, a lot of people who follow several gaming-related accounts also follow @xbox. If someone follows gaming-related accounts, but not @xbox, Twitter may recommend @xbox to that person.

We currently display “Suggestions for You” in the side panel on the right side of your logged-in Twitter.com homepage. Starting this week, you may see a Promoted Account as one of these suggestions. When there's no relevant recommendation, no Promoted Account will show.

Since we will only be testing Promoted Accounts with a handful of companies initially, there’s a chance that you might not see one at first. We look forward to getting interesting Promoted recommendations to you soon.

Promoted Products for Partners
We are also beginning to make Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends available beyond Twitter.com – something we have discussed doing since launching Promoted Tweets in April.

We are testing syndication of Promoted Products with a select number of partners – HootSuite is launching today, and others are on the way. These partners will run Promoted Tweets in search and highlight Promoted Trends, sharing in Twitter’s revenue for these products.

This is an important step for these partners and for the many highly active Twitter users who spend considerable time on third-party applications. As with all Twitter launches, we’ll review the initial feedback and determine where we take it from here.

And more
Along with these more noticeable changes, we made additional tweaks to our Promoted Products suite last Friday. We bumped up the Promoted Trend to the top of the trending topics list because we’ve been pleased with the quality of Promoted Trends and people are finding them useful. And you may have noticed that if you click on a Tweet with a hashtag that a brand is promoting, you will see a Promoted Tweet among the related Tweets in the details pane.

It’s been a busy but exciting few months for Twitter’s advertising team. We’ve launched 3 major products in the past 6 months. We’re working with over 40 advertisers – nearly 80% of whom have already become repeat buyers in this short period of time – and we have an exciting roadmap to expand to more advertisers. Plus, the new Twitter creates exciting opportunities to be creative with Promoted Tweets by combining text with pictures and video.

Thanks to our growing engineering and sales teams, you can look forward to more innovative ways to connect people with their favorite brands and interests.

People often tweet about TV shows as they’re watching them. Additionally, media companies are increasingly finding new ways to incorporate Tweets into their programs. Take, for example, Jimmy Fallon or the Video Music Awards in September. Tweets aren’t just about TV shows; they are part of them.

We’ve long discussed what the interplay between Twitter and television would look like. As a first step, today we’re announcing Twitter for Google TV. It brings Twitter to a platform that merges the Internet and TV into one experience.

The application has most of the features and functionality that you’d expect from Twitter. It makes it easy to look through Tweets, @mentions, and favorites. When you click on a Tweet, you can reply, retweet, favorite, or share it. You will also see additional options depending on the content of the Tweet. For example, you can visit a URL or click a hashtag to search for it on Twitter. If a user is mentioned, you can visit that user’s profile to see their Tweets or follow them. And if there is a link to a photo or video, you can see a thumbnail version. Clicking the link will take you to the site so you can see a larger version of the photo or watch the video.

Additionally, the search box provides access to trending topics and recent searches, so you can quickly check out popular topics and revisit past searches. Twitter for Google TV, which is preinstalled, also lets you share videos, web pages, pictures, and other content on Twitter – just look for the “Share” option and select Twitter.

This is just the beginning of what could be possible at the intersection of Twitter and television. We’re excited to see what’s next.