Yesterday afternoon Twitter released a very cool feature they are calling Blackbird Pie. This new function allows you to insert a link from an old status update & it will create the code to embed this tweet directly into a other places. So maybe you are referencing a tweet by someone in a blog post, or in a press release. The old form of sharing this information, was to do a screen capture & then upload the image into your blog. The problem though with this was that the names were not clickable to visit the links in screenshot. Nor could the person simply click on the followers username to see more of the conversation. That was until yesterday afternoon.
Now, users can embed tweets directly into other sites with live clickable links, usernames and even hashtags # for a topic. First below, you can see an example of an embedded tweet I recently sent out to some of the co-hosts of the online radio show, Social Media Edge:
Hey @thekencook @jasoncrouch @mikemueller have you guys ever had any #blackbirdpie? http://media.twitter.com/blackbird-pie/
This quoted tweet now adds value to a post much more than just the screen capture of it. A person can now click on each twitter users name to visit their page, they can click on the link in the tweet to see what I was referring to, and they can also follow the stream of conversation regarding the topic #blackbird instantly. Now that I have shown you what it is, let me show you just how easy it is to create an embedded tweet:
And if that wasn’t easy enough, here is an even simpler way to embed tweets. To set this up, simply go grab this Blackbird Pie bookmarklet & drag it to your toolbar on your browser. By doing this, you can get the code for any tweet in three easy steps. Here is a quick demo of how it works:
Is Blackbird Pie a gamechanger for Twitter and the way we use the network? Probably not, but it is a pretty cool new toy to enhance our experience there.
mikemueller
I can cut and paste in seconds. Actually, I think I may be faster than baking a Blackbird Pie.
But what's really cool about this is that the links and the people @repied in the tweet are real and actual links!
That's good stuff Twitter!
Jeremy Blanton
Mike, I agree, the @replies is probably one of my favorite parts too!