Twitter's Expanded Tweets Now Include Article Excerpts and Video

Twitter's new expanded view. Image credit: Twitter

Today Twitter is making it a lot easier for you to see just what might be in those links before you click. Its expanded tweets, a feature which has already shown YouTube videos or Instagram photo right on Twitter, will now display the first few lines of text of an article and even video right on the Twitter website; no need to click to see if you want to keep on reading.

If you see a tweet, for instance, with an ABC News link, you will be able to see the first few lines of text, the name of the author, and even a video (if applicable) without having to click the link. Of course, clicking the link will bring you to the full story.

"When you expand Tweets containing links to partner websites, you can now see content previews, view images, play videos and more," Twitter's Product Director, Michael Sippey, wrote on the company's blog today.

ABC News, TIME, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times are some of the first media partners. The feature will be rolling out to www.twitter.com and mobile.twitter.com today. However, it only works on Twitter sites; if you use a third-party Twitter client, like TweetDeck or Tweetie, you won't see the previews. Twitter also says the feature will be coming to the iPhone and Android Twitter apps.