As expected, Twitter has rolled out a new tool that lets you embed a tweet on a website. The feature –- which we confirmed was on its way on Monday –- replaces the need to take a screenshot and crop tweets, like we often do in blog posts when we want to quote someone via Twitter.
Using “Blackbird pie,” you can create an embeddable tweet by first entering the URL for the chosen message in the form that Twitter has created (that URL can be found using the timestamp on a tweet – i.e. –- where it says “3 hours ago”).
From there, click “Bake It,” and Blackbird will generate the code needed to embed the tweet on your website. Twitter notes when “you paste it into your site, the tweet will pick up some of your styling, e.g. the font-family you use on your p tags. That’s intentional!” Here’s what the end result looks like:
I’m on a Consumer Reports panel “Risky Behavior on Social Networks” with FCC and EFF at 12:30 today – http://bit.ly/cj4ZLiless than a minute ago via TweetDeck
Adam Ostrow
adamostrow
Unfortunately, the tool seems to be having some stability issues at launch (the above might not even load for you), highlighting the potential problem of embedding a tweet versus taking a screenshot –- you’re relying on the service to be up and running so that it can pull in the information, an area where Twitter hasn’t always had the best track record.
We’ll see if the service, which appears to be intended primarily for media (it lives on Twitter’s new media site), gains much adoption from blogs and news sites in the weeks to come.
