Twitter Launches Embeddable TweetsTwitter Launches Embeddable Tweets

Twitter has launched a way for people to take a collection of tweets and embed them on a Web site or blog.

The microblogging site on Tuesday released a tool that takes the URL for tweets and generates static HTML that displays the list of short messages. Using the generated code, people can embed the tweets on their Web site or blog.

The purpose of the tool is to provide a better option than taking a screen grab of tweets, which can be a "pain," Twitter said in its Twitter Media blog, where the tool has been used for quite awhile by Twitter. An example of the old screen-grab method of displaying tweets is on the ReadWriteWeb site, which used Twitter in gathering quotes on Hewlett-Packard's announcement last week that it planned to acquire smartphone maker Palm.

When the tweets appear on a site, they're supposed to pick up some of its styling, such as the font. "We've only used this on Twitter Media, so we'd love to hear how it works -- or doesn’t -- on other platforms and in the context of other designs," Twitter said.

The latest announcement followed Twitter's launch in March of @Anywhere, a feature that enables third-party sites to let visitors send and receive tweets without leaving the site. The feature would be useful, for example, by Web portals such as Yahoo, and is similar to Facebook's Connect service.

The Twitter and Facebook features are meant to extend the reach of the services to other Web sites. By building an extended network, the two sites are making their services more valuable to potential advertisers, as well as users.

Twitter last month announced that it will display Promoted Tweets on search results. The paid tweets will come from a select group of advertising partners, including Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America.