26 April 2012

Twitter web shows rich previews for WordPress links

WordPress rich previews on Twitter Web expandedWith the second major redesign, the web site added inline previews for images and video – it should help turn the site more into a destination for media consumption rather than a simple referral to original content. I noticed a couple of days ago that the rich previews are now generated for some links as well, namely those pointing to the domain wordpress.com; just do a Twitter search and click on the link ‘View media’ under the individual tweets.

The previews include snippets from the blog posts – the first paragraphs by the looks of it – and a picture – again, likely the first. For now the previews appear only in the stream, not on the individual pages for tweets. They look positively – dare I say it? – -like, especially now that open tweets also display interactions (replies, favorites, retweets) underneath! I would prefer a slightly smaller picture, right now they tend to fill up the entire vertical space on the screen, which feels out of place for a service known for brevity. This sneak-peak should help build user trust that the links don’t point to some malicious site and that the page is worth visiting. I didn't discover other domains with similar previews, but it’s reasonable to assume that it will be extended in time for more sites – needless to say, no Twitter client supports this feature as of now, not even the in-house-maintained TweetDeck. WordPress rich previews on Twitter Web

3 comments:

  1. Hi. I have just noticed this feature on twitter. It is great. I love it.

    But, I don't know how to use it. I looked for some information in the twitter help center about it but could not see anything.

    I guess I will need to create a wordpress blog. Create a blog post, maybe use the "tweet" button on the blog page. Is there any more to it than that?

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    Replies
    1. No. It's that simple. Just write your wordpress blog post and use "Share this - twitter" button which appears under the text of your blog post.

      The link to the blog post doesn't look any different from a normal shortened link in a tweet but the twitter webpage does its magic and adds a 'View media' link to your tweet.

      Great! Super!

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    2. Yes, it's completely automatic, Twitter pulls the information from the blog post and displays it on the site. They are doing it with more and more publishers, as they announced recently on the official blog.

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