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Twitter Enables Embedding Twitter Video On Websites

Taking a page from YouTube -- and beating Facebook to the punch -- Twitter now allows embedding its video without the tweet it came in.

Martin Beck on March 2, 2015 at 4:05 pm

Twitter is still playing catch-up to Facebook’s video juggernaut, but today it got a bit of a jump on its larger rival.

Twitter gave users the ability to embed Twitter videos to websites without their accompanying tweets. Facebook doesn’t currently support such feature. If you want to embed a Facebook video, you must embed the full Facebook post.

It’s probably not a game-changer — Facebook is drawing 3 billion video views daily on its network and Twitter just launched mobile video uploading last month — but the move shows Twitter’s emphasis on off-platform reach.

Now Twitter video is now a bit more like YouTube, which for years has made simple video embedding a core feature of its product.

The Twitter video embed, based on the same JavaScript the company uses to embed tweets and follow buttons, is accessed by clicking the three dots under a tweet on Twitter.com.

Here’s an video example from the NBA’s Twitter account. Note that you can display the text of the tweet that contained the video by clicking the Twitter logo in the lower right-hand corner.

Review: if Gallinari’s made FG was released before time expired in Q3 of #NOPvDEN. Ruling: Upheld, shot counts. http://t.co/pzAU88VNn1
— NBA Official (@NBAOfficial) March 2, 2015