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Steve Ivy's Weblog - Since 1999 - XII Ed.

"Embedded" Tweets, Aren't. Relax.

Shea Bennet posts a hyperventilating critique of Twitter’s new marketing tool to let you embed a tweet in your site: Blackbird Pie:

Prediction: embeddable tweets will soon be like all those YouTube videos that promise so much, only to serve up a no longer available error message as soon as you click play. Only this time without the promise part just a blank, empty void that mirrors your level of satisfaction.

Unlike what most of us nerds think of as embedding (<embed> and its ilk) Twitter is merely generating all the css to make the pasted code render exactly as it does on the Twitter web site. Witness:

“Embedded” Tweets… aren’t. At least, not like videos are. Don’t get you knickers in a knot.less than a minute ago via Tweetie

View the source: The only “fragile” hrefs in that code (i.e., not on your site) are the user’s background image and profile picture. So, yeah, I suppose those might disappear at some point, but a “just a blank, empty void that mirrors your level of satisfaction”? Come on.

My name is Steve Ivy and I write about technology, the open web, social software, and general nerdity on monkinetic.com. You should follow me on Twitter or subscribe to this blog if you like what you're reading. I spend my days hacking Movable Type, python, Django, and various other efforts at Wallrazer. This is my personal site.