Twitter wants to spend more time together. Quality time. As proof its ready for commitment, it launched Expanded Tweets with on site content, just to make sure you stick around.
Instead of just the quintessential 140 characters, Tweets with links to partner websites will feature preview content, including images, videos, and music. It’s an effort to keep users on the Twitter site instead of the linked site.
“You’ve probably expanded Tweets before to play videos from YouTube or see photos from Instagram,” wrote Michael Sippey, Director of Twitter’s Product Team, on Twitter’s blog. “Now, a diverse and growing group of new partners like the the Wall St. Journal, Breaking News also deliver rich content inside Tweets containing a link to those websites.”
Twitter’s news partners include the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, MSNBC’s Breaking News, San Francisco Chronicle, Der Speigel, and TIME. Expanded Tweets will include the headline and introduction preview, plus the Twitter accounts of the publisher and writer. Readers can then click through to the article, reply or retweet, without leaving Twitter itself.
Other partners include BuzzFeed, TMZ, WWE, Lifetime, Dailymotion, and BET’s 106 & Park. Audio clips from Soundcloud can also be imbedded into Tweets.
The Expanded Tweets feature is currently on Twitter.com and Mobile.Twitter.com, with apps for the iPhone and Twitter soon expected. It gradually began its roll out to users on June 14.
Though for now the streamed material is only related to content, its potential for an advertising tool is obvious.
Twitter’s come a long way with 140 characters, but it’s ready to take this relationship to the next level, sharing content one-on-one. How committed is that?