Twitter's Facebook Connect, the @anywhere Platform

Twitter has always been very open with its service and has allowed third-party developers to integrate it tightly with their apps or services. The microblogging platform is now looking to expand that by introducing the @anywhere platform, a tool to enable outside publishers to implement Twitter features on their sites using what amounts to small, embeddable widgets.

"We’ve developed a new set of frameworks for adding this Twitter experience anywhere on the web. Soon, sites many of us visit every day will be able to recreate these open, engaging interactions providing a new layer of value for visitors without sending them to Twitter.com," Twitter cofounder Biz Stone wrote.

"Our open technology platform is well known and Twitter APIs are already widely implemented but this is a different approach because we’ve created something incredibly simple. Rather than implementing APIs, site owners need only drop in a few lines of javascript. This new set of frameworks is called @anywhere," he announced.

The platform is not being launched right now, though it should not be long now, but Twitter has already partnered with Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, and YouTube to integrate the features.

In a sense, the @anywhere platform is similar to Facebook Connect. Publishers and website owners will be able to recreate some of the functionality on Twitter.com, including the actual stream, on their own site, so a news blog, for example, could have its editors' Twitter streams alongside the actual posts.

Users will also be able to log into Twitter on those sites and even follow their accounts without visiting Twitter.com. The move should prove beneficial for all parties involved. Users will be able to keep up with the sites they're interested in a lot easier and publishers will get more engagement from their visitors. Finally, Twitter gets more exposure to mainstream users, which could mean an uptake in sign-ups that have been leveling off for the past few months.