Twitter wants more developers embedding content into tweets

Apr 3, 2013 08:44 GMT  ·  By

Twitter is more than happy to have developers work on its platform, just as long as they don't build clients or any features Twitter already has or plans to add. But anyone using the new Cards platform is welcomed.

Cards make it possible to add content to a tweet, be it videos, images and so on. Twitter is now debuting several new types of cars as well as some improvements for existing types, all based on mostly rewritten code which should make it easier for Twitter to add new card types in the future.

"The new Cards system lays a foundation that will make it easier for us to develop more types of Cards in the future and allow for greater customization by publishers and developers. Additionally, this new system is backward compatible," Twitter explained.

Three new types of cars are now supported. App cards are rather self-explanatory, they enable developers to add info about their apps, icons, description, ratings, price and so on. Twitter pulls this data straight from the App Store or the Play store.

Product cards are similar, though more general, they enable developers to provide a description, ratings, price and so on. Finally, Gallery cards make it possible to share entire image galleries on Twitter rather than an individual image.

Also new is mobile app deep-linking, which makes it possible for developers to provide a direct link to their apps in tweets. This way, people who haven't installed that particular app can grab it to view more of the content embedded in a tweet while existing users will be taken straight to the app.

"We're introducing mobile app deep-linking in Cards –– a new feature that closes the loop between content creation, content discovery and app downloads," Twitter said.

"With mobile app deep-linking, users will be able to tap a link to either view content directly in your app, or download your app, depending on whether or not they have your app installed," it added.