Categories: Social Media

Twitter recommits to openness with relaunched embeddable timelines

Twitter has been going through a transition of late. As the company matures it has been placing a stronger emphasis on revenue generation, much to the chagrin of developers many of whom have accused the company of shutting down its previously open ecosystem.

But today Twitter has effectively recommitted itself to openness and released an updated embeddable timeline service providing site owners and web developers with access to Twitter content across the web.

Like embeddable tweets, which allow website owners to place individual tweets into their sites, Twitter’s embeddable timeline allows site owners to place a real-time stream of tweets into their pages.

Re-tweeting the widget

This is an update of Twitter’s previous embeddable widget, which was (to be honest), not the prettiest and was severely limited in the options available. The old widget maker, which you can see below, has been taken offline. This new system has been designed to provide users with a greater ability to interact with tweets directly from third party sites. Twitter also says that the new system has been designed to work with modern browsers and mobile browsers (we can confirm it’s responsive).

Twitter’s defunct widget maker;

Twitter’s old public widget set-up. Now removed from the site.

Twitter’s old widget maker showing default settings.

You can see the new embeddable timeline below which comes in four flavors – you can create embeddable widgets for users’ timelines, users’ favourites, users’ Twitter lists, or any search term. Previously Twitter allowed users to create widgets anonymously, without having to log in; now widgets can only be created when logged in and are associated with users’ accounts.

“When you browse websites that have embedded a Twitter timeline, you can now interact with it in the same way you do on twitter.com. Expand Tweets to see photos, media, and more. Start a conversation from the Tweet box, follow users that you discover, and reply to, retweet, or favorite Tweets directly from the page.”


Creating a Twitter Widget

Twitter Widgets are all created through the “Configure a Widget” page, which is available on your profile. Once logged in you can create widgets that show tweets from individual users, their favourites, and their lists. You actually have fewer options with the new widget creator than before; with the old system you could select various background and foreground colours, now you only have the option to change link colours. This is probably down to Twitter’s recent efforts to maintain the authority of its brand.

You do have the added option to “Opt-out of tailoring Twitter” when embedding tweets – this basically customizes the tweets shown according to a user’s preferences.

The final tweet

While this is basically a re-styling of Twitter’s older embeddable timeline system (with a few fewer options) the fact that it has been redeveloped and released to the public shows that the open Twitter which some developers have lamented isn’t gone.

Ajit Jain

Ajit Jain is marketing and sales head at Octal Info Solution, a leading iPhone app development company and offering platform to hire Android app developers for your own app development project. He is available to connect on Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Recent Posts

This AI Copilot Doesn’t Wait for Prompts — It Thinks Like a Hacker

Hey HackerNoon, it’s Kuwguap again. A while back, I wrote about building RAWPA, my AI…

5 days ago

How Humanity Engineered Thought: From Ancient Fire Circles to ChatGPT

Delivering truth was never about facts. Throughout history, from traditions to search engines and now…

5 days ago

People who grow up around robots may develop feelings for them, lose ability to socialize: WEF ‘Summer Davos’

Will we merge ourselves so intimately with technology that it becomes so much a part…

5 days ago

City of Seville welcomes the return of Techstars Startup Weekend

Techstars Startup Weekend Seville has announced that it will celebrate its 29th edition this June…

6 days ago

Meet agentic AI: Your AI agent just leveled up to teammate (Brains Byte Back Podcast)

You’ve probably been coming across the term “agentic AI” a lot more recently, and in…

1 week ago