Twitter CEO, Evan Williams has just announced a new platform for integrating Twitter into other websites called @anywhere.
Essentially it’s a way to place the Twitter hovercards on any site. Twitter have integrated the new feature into 13 sites including Amazon, ebay, Yahoo, Digg, Bing, Meebo.
You can watch a video demo (in awful quality) below:
In many respects this feels similar to Tweetmeme’s recent product launch, a follow button which essentially integrates a button on any site and allows users to follow accounts without having to leave the site itself. Twitter’s version differs in the fact it allows you to add a link to any word and have that launch a hover card that lets you follow the person there and then.
In a blog post, Twitter says “Imagine being able to follow a New York Times journalist directly from her byline.” Imagine no more, you can do that now with Tweetmeme in our bylines (see below). Of course, you have to be logged into Tweetmeme, just as you would have to be with Twitter.
If this is all the news that’s coming today, it’s going to be a bitter disappointment to those who were expecting a large scale advertising platform on Twitter.com itself.
For more information on the @anywhere platform, stay tuned or follow @anywhere.
The twitter handle @anywhere seems to be the Twitter account to follow for the updates on this new platform. It had 42 followers when I started following it and it is growing fast.
2400 followers now. :-)
Wow, what a lukewarm “applause” at the end.
Wow, what a lukewarm “applause” at the end.
Eh.
lol, wasn't it?
yeah, not too great..
Meh…not too impressed
Nice post and thanks for the video of the presentation explaining it. Seems like this would be a good thing for Twitter and Twitter users, but I would think there would be a couple of drawbacks as well, such as spam and the @anywhere links being abused by advertisers. Nice to see the folks a Twitter to continue to innovate though.
This is all?
It will be interesting to see if the @Anywhere experience will become a real integral part of these sites. If @Anywhere is fully incorporated into NYTimes.com, for instance, it will change what people expect mainstream news sites to be able to provide.
The @anywhere script has been removed from the article shown on screen: http://tinyurl.com/y8uvzbw “Thoughts on Hosting the 2010 Academy Awards” by Alec Baldwin, interesting enough it was written a week ago (8 of March). Plus the script is nowhere to be found currently on Huff Post. (which is kind of sad).
I think there is much more in this framework than just showing tweets and following people it can be easily used for advertising (at least I think so :)
Plus, I believe with this feature the follow button introduced by tweetmeme is loosing its value, same applies to many other third party twitter clients and services based on the API and providing some small added values on which twitter will now take over :)
Yet to check code – but it's going to give a few 3rd party web service operators, that offer those functions as a choice too include on blogs / websites, a bit of a shake up – I can see these sorts of businesses now moving to integrate “Google Buzz” account holders as well as “Twitter” account holders for commenting – which could see the rise in Buzz users and work to Twitter's detriment.. We will see – going to have a closer look at code now.. ummm…