With an aim of making the leading microblogging site more interactive, Twitter has partnered with a number of online media companies to enable users to have access to a range of multimedia content when expanding a tweet.
Companies including the Der Spiegel Online, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, TMZ, Time magazine and WWE partnered with Twitter to enhance expanded tweets.
What this means is that when you see a tweet with a link to one of the partner’s content, you will be able to see the first few lines of the article, the name of the author, and even a video — if applicable — without having to click the link and leave Twitter. The option of clicking the link will however be available so you can have access to the full story.
The new expanded tweets also mean users will be able to see, within Twitter, clips from their favourite TV shows.
Twitter’s expanded tweets have been rolled out on the Twitter.com website as well as Mobile.twitter.com and will soon be coming to iOS and Android applications. It however appears that currently expanded tweets enhancement is only available in the USA.
It appears also Twitter is on a drive to make users stay on the website and mobile apps much longer with all the new features. It is interesting to note Twitter seems to be looking at new features that have a great potential of generating them revenue.
Twitter has also not yet announced whether it has partnered with any African media companies to provide African relevant content to the expanded tweets.
