Twitter adds embed functionality

Now you can quote tweets on other platforms

4 May 2010 10:50 GMT / By Paul Lamkin

Twitter has announced an embedding feature that will allow bloggers and other online authors to directly display tweets within their posts.

At the moment, if you want to display a tweet you either have to manually type or paste the text into a post, or do a botch job of embedding the tweet as an image. The new feature will mean that a tweet can be displayed by simply using a bit of HTML, along the same lines that YouTube videos can be embedded currently.

The service was announced to Twitter via their blog, in a post entitled "Tweets are the new quotes". It's a bit of a bold statement from the micro-bloggers - we can't see future generations quoting about their ancestors' trips to the petrol station to buy Twiglets in the same way people now quote Shakespeare.

It is a nifty little tool though, especially when you consider how important tweets can be in breaking news stories. Just look at last weeks' bigotsgate fiasco for an example of how Twitter can fuel the news agenda.

Expect to see an "embed this tweet" option added to Twitter in the next day or so and expect to see a lot of lazy journalists using embedded tweets in order to meet their word counts. Not here on Pocket-lint though, we're far too noble for anything like that.

Via: media.twitter.com

Full tags

Software, Twitter, Social networking, Social networks