Earlier this week, Robin Sloan (@robinsloan) of the Twitter Media team unveiled a new tool called Blackbird Pie that allows online publishers to embed tweets within their posts rather than needing to do screen captures and creating images. In order to use the tool, you simply enter the URL of a tweet into a box on the site, click “Bake It,” and you’re then given a preview of how the tweet will display along with the code to embed.
Beside the ease of use, it also allows @-mentions, hashtags, and everything else hotlinked. The display will copy the Twitter user’s original profile background. It will also pick up some of the stylings of your site, such as “font-family” tags, although this may change in the future. Future updates to Blackbird Pie include shorter code and real time stamps.
Trevor Jonas of Social Media Today ponders what the future may bring to the service:
I bet we see Twitter starting to prominently display lists of the most quoted Tweeters – both overall and from specific categories (i.e. technology, sports, entertainment). We may even start to see which Twitter users are ‘trending’ in terms of of their quotability. Essentially, Blackbird Pie may function similarly to how hashtags do now.
I tried inserting a sample, using a tweet from SixEstate co-founder David Reich (@SixEstate), but it’s looking pretty unattractive, as you can see below. I think the early version of the code won’t play well with some WordPress themes:
Launched a new client blog: http://ChildhoodObesityNews.com – a resource 4 health care pros, parents, teachers, counselors, kids.
David Reich
sixestate
Source: “Twitter Blackbird-Pie,” TechCrunch, 05/04/10
Source: “Embeddable Tweets Will Start Dominating Blog Posts Tomorrow,” TechCrunch, 05/03/10
Source: “Twitter Cooks Up the Blackbird Pie Tool to Bake Tweets Into Your Website,” Twitter Media, 05/04/10
Source: “What is Twitter really up to with ‘Blackbird Pie’?,” Social Media Today, 05/04/10
Screen captures from Blackbird Pie website used under Fair Use: Reporting.