Twitter seeks to embed self in everything

Web2.0rhea 'anywhere'

Twitter has unveiled a new set of tools for embedding its Web2.0rhea service in third-party websites.

Dubbed "@anywhere," these JavaScript-based frameworks were announced yesterday with a company blog post and an apparently soporific keynote from CEO Evan Williams that sent half his audience for the exit doors within an half an hour.

The new framework, says the blog post, is not to be confused with the existing Twitter APIs. With @anywhere, developers can add Twitter links and data to their sites using "a few lines of JavaScript."

"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," the post reads. "With @anywhere, web site owners and operators will be able to offer visitors more value with less heavy lifting."

Go ahead, imagine.

While boring his audience at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, Evan Williams said that the frameworks would also let users link their Twitter accounts with third-party sites a la Facebook Connect.

Launch partners include Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube. But the tools have not yet launched. It's unclear whether sites will have to actually pay money for the use of certain @anywhere tools. Currently, sites like Google, Microsoft's Bing, and Yahoo! are paying untold amounts for direct access to the so-called Twitter "firehose," the company's massive stream of Web2.0rhea.

Sites can access the stream with the Twitter APIs, but this sort of access isn't quite as snappy. ®