July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Sports fans should be pleased to learn that their Twitter feeds are now more useful for catching up on game highlights and replay video clips.

Today, streaming video platform Ooyala announced it will offer support for Twitter Cards, Twitter’s new standard for adding rich media (videos, pictures, articles) into tweets. ESPN is the first client to take advantage of Ooyala’s Twitter Card support, so ESPN videos are now embedded directly into a tweet when sharing a link. (See screenshot below.) Users can watch the video from their Twitter stream rather than having to navigate to the sports giant’s website.

The new Twitter Card integration seems like a win for all parties. Twitter will undoubtedly get its sports fan users to spend more time browsing their Twitter stream, while ESPN gains yet another platform to share its content.

While several media services use Twitter’s Card API — including Flickr, Soundcloud, New York Times, Foursquare, and WordPress –  there is a certification process before the integration goes live on Twitter’s website. So it makes sense that Ooyala would want to offer support, since many of its clients produce premium video content that can benefit from wide distribution channels.

“ESPN is sort of the perfect example to show what kind of [content] publishers can choose to expose through a Twitter stream,” Ooyala Project Manager Brian Theodore told VentureBeat. “The obvious approach is to share their entire library, but our Card API support means they can target their video content around a Twitter audience.”

The Twitter Card integration will also allow Ooyala to give its clients better analytics on content consumed on the social network, new advertising opportunities, and improved video discovery. The company said it hopes to offer its Twitter Card support to other clients in the future.

Top photo via ESPN

Twitter’s expanded tweets party is minus one VIP guest, but several other social services seem eager to make an appearance. The Yahoo-owned Flickr, alongside the release of a new app for iPhone, threw in support for Twitter Cards this morning, bringing its newly filtered captures to tweets near you.

Flickr vice president Brett Wayn hinted about the integration in a blog post this morning. Head of product Markus Spiering confirmed to VentureBeat that the Twitter Cards update went live early this morning.

A Flickr photo as seen on Twitter

Now, when you share a photo from Flickr to Twitter (from the new iPhone app or anywhere else), that photo shows up right inside your tweet, meaning your followers can enjoy the capture without leaving Twitter. Flickr previously employed a custom integration that enabled Twitter desktop users to see photos in-line with tweets, Spiering said, but the Yahoo photo property reworked the functionality to make its photos viewable inside Twitter’s mobile apps as well.

“When you think about what a user really wants, if you use the Flickr app, you chose Flickr as your photo service, and you upload your photos to Flickr,” Spiering said. “But also you make the explicit choice to share somewhere else. As a user, your expectation probably is … that you want to have your photos look as best as possible on the destination that you share them to.”

In-tweet Flickr photos are powered by Twitter Cards, also known as expanded tweets. Third-party partners can work with the information network to put their content inside your tweets for instant gratification. A smattering of companies, most recently Pinterest, have worked with Twitter to get their content in front of more people. But not Instagram. The hot photo-sharing app collected its square, stylized shots and went home.

With both Twitter and Flickr now offering their members photo filters, some could now see the companies as competitors. Flickr, however, desperately needs support from the hipper, more popular Twitter if the veteran photo-sharing service is to make a comeback. It also appreciates its relationship with Twitter, Spiering told me.

“For the mobile launch, it was important to us that we fully embrace Twitter’s platform and capabilities to provide the best photo-sharing experience for Flickr users,” he said.

Flickr also made adjustments to how its photos are viewed on Facebook. Now, photos shared from Flickr to Facebook are shown in full and look as if they were directly uploaded to Facebook, Spiering explained.

Photo credit: dirkdallas/Flickr

It’s not exactly a tit-for-tat swap, but around the same time Instagram pulled its photos from the Twitter experience, Pinterest pins started appearing inside tweets.

Pinterest formally added support for Twitter Cards within the last week, VentureBeat has confirmed. The release went live as a limited test early last week and received little fanfare until the Twitter-embedded pins were spotted by Pinterest aficionado Kelly Lieberman and the story was picked up by the Daily Dot.

The Pinterest-Twitter mashup means that whenever you post one of your inspirational pins to Twitter, the contents of said pin will appear inside your tweet. With pins inside tweets, people can see a preview of your fashion finds or holiday recipes without having to click through to Pinterest.

The integration leverages Twitter Cards, also known as expanded tweets. The functionality allows third-party partners to put their photos, news, videos, songs, and so forth, inside your tweets for immediate enjoyment.

Twitter has an arsenal of partners pumping content into your tweets, but Instagram is not one of them. The Facebook-owned property unceremoniously dropped support for Twitter Cards last week, citing a desire to drive people to its website for a better experience.

Is it just a coincidence that Pinterest pins have arrived inside tweets as Instagram photos have exited from them? Yes and no. Twitter and Pinterest certainly worked together on the integration, but that may be only because of how Twitter Cards is currently structured. Companies interested in employing Cards go through a formal approval process that requires Twitter to review the implementation before it goes live. Pinterest, however, may have chosen to speed up the implementation process and expand the test after the Instagram dustup.

Regardless, the Pinterest addition is good for Twitter. The more top-tier partners Twitter can get to use Cards, the better its chances are of keeping its members engaged on site or inside the mobile apps longer. Perhaps people may also start to forget what they’re missing.

Update: A Pinterest spokesperson said Thursday, December 13 that the company has ended its test of Twitter Cards. “We have now completed the test and are turning off the integration while we evaluate the results.”

Blue bird image via Shutterstock

In a move that’s just short of waving a big blue flag with an “F” on it, social photo-sharing service Instagram made a decision to de-emphasize its relationship with Twitter recently.

Essentially, Instagram stopped supporting “Twitter Cards,” which enable a third-party company (like Instagram) to embed rich media (pictures, videos, articles, etc.) directly into a tweet that’s displayed on Twitter’s website or native apps. Usually, shutting off this kind of support would mean that your media would no longer have this functionality within Tweets, but Instagram photos continued to show up, except they were cropped weirdly.

The reason for this is because Twitter simply implemented old code that was used to embed photos prior to the existence of the new Twitter Card standard. Since Instagram is still technically sending their photo data to Twitter directly, Twitter was able to continue supporting photo integration, even though it was a broken experience.

However, at any point, Instagram could easily decide to stop sending its photo data to Twitter, and the make-shift Twitter Card “support” would drop entirely — meaning the only way you’d be able to see Instagram photos is when you clicked the link contained within a tweet.

Some publications are reporting that even uncropped Instagram photos are once again being displayed within Twitter Cards, but that doesn’t mean the two service have reconciled. Instagram parent company Facebook told VentureBeat’s Jennifer Van Grove that Instagram’s stance on Twitter Card integration remains the same.

So eventually, Instagram could completely shut off Twitter Card integration, even though it’s already officially stopped supporting Twitter Cards. That means Twitter would need to make an exception to their “Twitter Card” standard if it wants to continue embedding Instagram photos properly. And since that seems like special treatment, I’m not sure how long Twitter will realistically want to do that. (For now, it seems that Instagram is OK with having its user photos embedded within tweets as long as it doesn’t have to lift a finger.)

I’ve reached out to Twitter for further clarification about its current implementation of Instagram photo integration. And we’ll be sure to update the post with more information when they get back to us.