Twitter has announced through their blog several updates to the embedded tweet capability. Last year, Twitter began allowing users to embed a tweet onto a website, often used in blog posts and news stories to better share specific tweets with readers. Today, Twitter has released several udpates to the service to make embedded tweets even better.
First, the update allows Embedded Tweets to display photos, videos, article summaries and other content shared in a Tweet, just like you see on Twitter.com. You can also view retweet and favorite counts to better gauge the effectiveness of your tweet.
Twitter has also made some adjustments to the font and style of the embedded Tweet to make it easier to read, made it easier to grab an embedded tweet, and increased the speed with which the embedded tweets load on your page.
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As you can see, the new embedded tweet is far more dynamic. To embed a tweet of your own, open Twitter and click on the more link after the tweet. Click on Embed Tweet, highlight and copy the HTML code, and then paste it into your page where you want the tweet to appear.
For businesses, embedded tweets are a fantastic way to reference a tweet in your blog posts without asking readers to leave your blog. If you’re talking about a current event, for instance, you might find a quote from someone involved in the event on Twitter that you can bring into your blog. Or, you might reference one of your own tweets giving users an easy opportunity to follow you, favorite and retweet the post. Ideally, your business is creating content that is so interesting and compelling that it is your readers that are embedding your tweets on their own sites to quote and reference you and your content.
The information included on the Twitter Card is still somewhat limited. Expanded Tweets, the inclusion of a teaser and more information, is still limited to a select number of businesses and media outlets like The New York Times. And, if you included an image from Instagram, the image will still be displayed as a link only.
What do you think of these changes? Have you ever embedded a tweet? Do you know if anyone else has ever embedded one of yours?