Embed Twitter-hosted videos on your own site with new widget
It just became a whole lot easier to embed Twitter-hosted videos on websites. A newly launched widget makes it possible to add the video from a tweet to a website without the need to embed the entire tweet. It's a neat-looking solution that makes it simple to embed videos without unnecessary, distracting page furniture.
It works in just the same way as embedding an entire tweet, and it provides a way for Twitter to drive traffic back to its own site rather than other video services, whilst simultaneously making life easier for embedders and helping to pull in followers from other sites.
Embedding a video takes nothing more than clicking the More (ellipsis) button beneath a tweet and then selecting the Embed Video option. The necessary HTML is displayed ready for copying and pasting into the code of a web page or blog post. The way the widget works means that when used outside of Twitter, it is an excellent marketing tool for your Twitter account.
The video player blends neatly into the look of just about any website, and it does more than just house a video. Part of the point of using Twitter as a video-sharing platform is to gain followers, and the video widget helps in this regard. A link to the Twitter account that uploaded the video is displayed to the lower left of the video widget, while to the lower right a Twitter logo provides access to the main text of the tweet along with an all-important Follow button.
Check out the sample below which shows off how the widget looks:
You can now shoot, edit and share video on Twitter. Capture life's most moving moments from your perspective. pic.twitter.com/31JoMS50ha
— Twitter (@twitter) January 27, 2015