Twitter dot com is now embedding tweet links (and so are some phone apps) - looks nice but best for single tweets

This post is really only for Twitter completists interested in its changing appearance / interfaces.

Twitter's changed the way it displays tweets on the desktop version (and apparently on some of the third party smartphone / tablet apps too) where you include the address of another tweet. Here's what a tweet used to look like if it included a link to another tweet (the bit that says "twitter.com/JoBrodie/statu..."). You had to click on the link to see what it said.

Here's what that tweet looks like now - you no longer have to click on it to see what I originally said. I've displayed it both as a screenshot and an embedded tweet because - obviously - Twitter keeps changing how stuff looks (hence this post!) so I thought it was best to capture it as I saw it.

(1) screenshot

(2) embedded

The search is over https://t.co/eIwycGBAjf, I've found someone that blogs about lipids - it's @SamuelFurse http://t.co/MDEdN7mgek
— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) March 23, 2013

To find the original copy of this tweet I searched for from:jobrodie samuelfurse, the tweet actually looked 'old style' in the list of tweets that resulted, and when I clicked on it (which makes it expand to show the conversation). When I clicked on its address (click on the timestamp) to open it up in its own window it changed to the new embed style.

This tweet is over a year old but tweets sent more recently no longer even show the twitter.com/NAME/statu... but miss out the address entirely, the embedded picture of the tweet is clickable and goes to the tweet's page.

Here's me trying to see how many tweets can be embedded within it ;)

(1) Screenshot

(2) embedded

Well this seems new. Including a link to someone else's tweet, shows up like this, embedded clickable pic pic.twitter.com/IrjHiHVwXQ
— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) July 30, 2014

Where Twitter shows the URL and the picture (as above) only the picture appears to be clickable, the address seems to have stopped working. This isn't really a problem if only one tweet is included because you just click on the picture but if more than one tweet-link is included only one will be accessible to the reader.

Apparently it works fine on smartphone apps but if you're trying to read it on desktop Twitter it might be a bit fiddly. You don't seem to be able to right-click / open in new tab - hopefully this is a temporary glitch.

Once embedded in a blog post a tweet will stay there even if deleted from Twitter (in theory)

This is another one of those posts that's really just for me ;)

On 1 May 2011 I sent a tweet and then, a day later I deleted it. It's still there though because before deleting it I added it to Storify, and now it's trapped there forever. The take-home lesson from this is that even if a tweet's later deleted, once it's been saved in Storify it's permanently saved (you can also take screenshots etc).

I've never tried it in a blog post but am expecting it to work because Twitter's help files indicate that it should*. An embedded tweet inherits all the information that lets someone who's reading it on a blog post (instead of on Twitter) interact with it - they can favourite or RT it. If the tweet is deleted from Twitter this is no longer possible but the text of the tweet (and who sent it and when) remains.

Let's see... I just sent this and will soon delete it.

URL of tweet: https://twitter.com/JoBrodie/status/487658994925072385

Embedded version:

This is a test tweet that I'm going to embed in a blog post or two and then delete. Only tested w Storify b4, 3y ago https://t.co/mjcI6xocLu
— Jo Brodie (@JoBrodie) July 11, 2014

Now to delete it and see what happens. (According to the info below if I made my account private that would have the same effect).

Edit 
Now that the tweet is deleted you can see what it looks like above, and this is how it had appeared on this post before I deleted it from Twitter.

 

*"What if a user deletes a Tweet after it has been embedded on another website? Similarly, what happens to Tweets from users that change their Tweets from public to protected (or become suspended)?

In all of these cases, Twitter branding and Tweet actions will be removed from the embedded Tweet, but the content of the Tweet will still be visible."

Trying out the Twitter embed tweet option

Came across this page from the Twitter development pages: Embedded Tweets

It says that the easiest way to create a bit of code to embed a tweet is to click on the Embed link in the tweet...

I can't see, when I look at a tweet's individual page, any mention of an embed link as they show in the example so I wonder what I'd have to do to make it appear..

At the bottom of the page there are two bits of code and this is one of them - it might embed a tweet, it might not, let's see

Search API will now always return "real" Twitter user IDs. The with_twitter_user_id parameter is no longer necessary. An era has ended. ^TS
— Twitter API (@twitterapi) November7, 2011