Request Media Kit

Twitter Gives Websites Video Embeds

Twitter announced the launch of a new embedded video widget, which enables people to embed Twitter-hosted videos on their websites, utilizing the same JavaScript used by tweet buttons and embedded twe...
Twitter Gives Websites Video Embeds
Written by Chris Crum
  • Twitter announced the launch of a new embedded video widget, which enables people to embed Twitter-hosted videos on their websites, utilizing the same JavaScript used by tweet buttons and embedded tweets.

    The widget works with videos captured and uploaded via Twitter’s iOS and Android apps as well as its Twitter Amplify partners, which include Viacom, BBC Global News, Fox TV, CBS, McDonald’s, Verizon, and the NFL.

    Twitter launched its native video experience in January after first teasing it a couple months prior. It enables Twitter users to capture,edit, and share videos from its mobile apps. You can capture and share videos up to 30 seconds.

    You’ve already been able to embed tweets with videos in them:

    Now, if you click the … on a Tweet like you would if you were going to embed the tweet itself, you’ll see an “Embed Video” option:

    From there it gives you the embed code just for the video without the rest of the tweet:

    You can choose whether or not you want to include the tweet when the logo is clicked:

    Unfortunately, Twitter doesn’t give you a way to easily customize the dimensions of the video like YouTube does, but perhaps that will be added in the future.

    “Developers may programmatically generate embedded video markup by passing widget_type=video to our existing oEmbed-compatible API endpoint,” notes Twitter developer advocate Niall Kennedy. “Individual widgets may also be inserted using a JavaScript factory function supported by widgets-js.”

    Twitter video is still in its infancy, so it will be interesting to see how widely adopted it becomes, particularly among marketers. Facebook video has blown up over the past year, and Twitter is no doubt looking for a similar trend, even if not on such a grand scale.

    Twitter has long been a great place to find embeddable content for blog posts. Embeddable tweets have been around for much longer than embeddable Facebook posts. With videos now part of that mix, it’s a nice expansion of the options available to bloggers and journalists.

    The offering can only help Twitter expand its usage and exposure away from its own website and apps. This off-Twitter usage is already a major part of Twitter’s overall usage, which the company seems to keep having to remind people (and investors) about.

    Last week, Twitter gave bloggers another helpful tool with the launch of an official WordPress plugin. This includes Twitter Cards, Analytics, Embedded tweets and video, the tweet button, the follow button, Twitter advertising, and a base library. The company says the plugin will help sites grow their Twitter audiences.

    Images via Twitter

    Get the WebProNews newsletter
    delivered to your inbox

    Get the free daily newsletter read by decision makers

    Subscribe
    Advertise with Us

    Ready to get started?

    Get our media kit