TWITTER EVERYWHEREThe evolution of Twitter from application to platform

At SXSWi 2010, Evan Williams was the keynote speaker.

There was a big expectation that Twitter would be announcing an ad platform.

They didn’t. People were disappointed.

What they did announce, however, is significant.

What they announced is another step towards an open, interoperable and socially contextual web.

Let’s start with where Twitter is at now….

10 billion tweets

Everyone is doing it.

Even your bank.

And your mom.

So far, Twitter has been

about, well…

Twittering

but what if Twitter could actually enhance your overall web experience by providing more context &

relevancy to the touch points you visit

Twitter thought so too.

So they hatched something.

It’s going to be big.

@ANYWHERE

“We’ve developed a new set of frameworks for adding this

Twitter experience anywhere on the web. Soon, sites many of us visit every day will be able to

recreate these open, engaging interactions providing a new layer of value for visitors without sending them to Twitter.com. Our open technology platform is well known and Twitter APIs are already widely implemented but this is a different approach because we’ve created something incredibly simple. Rather than implementing APIs, site owners need only drop in a few lines of

javascript. This new set of frameworks is called @anywhere.

In a nutshell….

• @anywhere is Twitter’s latest support for data portability

• This new platform allows for a socially contextual and seamless Twitter experience across any site or service

• It allows this integration without the use of API’s, thus making its implementation easier

let’s look at some of its features

• Users may sign into other sites using their Twitter credentials

• 3rd party sites may deliver more relevancy and context based on user’s Twitter identities and social graph

• Links may now provide a richer dimension to a reader’s experience

• When a user scrolls over a hyperlink, a flash “hovercard” will appear displaying a the highlighted Twitter feed’s follower count, and provide an option for the reader to follow that Twitter feed without leaving the page

Identity

Linking

Link “hovercard”allows readers to see a Twitter feed’s stats and follow them without leaving the page

Similar to Facebook Connect, initial launch partners are largely media

“Imagine being able to follow a New York Times journalist directly from her byline,

tweet about a video without leaving YouTube, and discover new Twitter accounts while visiting the Yahoo! home page—and that’s just the beginning. Twitter has proven to be

compelling in a variety of ways. With @anywhere, web site owners and operators will be able to offer visitors more value with

less heavy lifting.”

-Twitter blog

What does @anywhere

mean for marketing?

Thought starters & questions

• Twitter’s partnership with Google and Bing would suggest that these search engines will give increasingly more weight to the social equity of links….

• How does the @anywhere linking feature affect SEO practices?

• Amazon is a launch partner, will we see merchandising models arise based on a user’s social graph? How might that impact future e-comm architectures?

• Aside from simply increasing ease of sign in, how can sites effectively leverage Twitter identities for increased relevancy and usefulness for users?

• How do we measure the success of an @anywhere implementation?

Alisa Leonard-HansenSocial Media EvangelistiCrossingalisa.leonard-hansen@icrossing.com

www.TheWebisSocial.com#dataportability #icrossing