Twitter beefs up embedded tweets, short Vine videos could come soon

Updated: Vine will launch soon, perhaps even tomorrow, but according to sources speaking with AllThingD's Peter Kafka, the video sharing company's flicks won't end up on Twitter.

Instead, when Vine launches, it will land on Apple's App Store. It may find its way to Twitter, but not in a fully integrated fashion, Kafka noted.

According to the sources, there won't be any Twitter branding on Vine even though it is owned by the company.

Original story continues below...

Good news for bloggers, web journalists and frequenters of the Information Superhighway: Twitter has updated its 'Embed Tweet' option to include attached media and web articles.

Now, instead of the embedded tweet appearing with links to non-text features, attached items like photos, YouTube clips and article summaries from websites will be present.

The change will benefit news sites, who are increasingly gleaning and reproducing news from the Twitter feeds of celebrities, notable web users and Twitter users who witness important events first hand.

The 'Embed Tweet' option appears for all Twitter.com users within the More menu underneath each tweet. Selecting the option brings up a simple piece of HMTL code, which can be inserted into an article.

Faster loading

Twitter added on its official blog that retweet and favourite counts will also appear within the new embedded tweets options and they will also load faster than previously within websites.

Product Manager Brian Ellin wrote: "Embedded Tweets display photos, videos, article summaries and other content shared in a Tweet, just like you see on twitter.com.

"You can also view retweet and favorite counts to better understand engagement, and we've made some tweaks to the design so that embedded Tweets are easier to read."

Twitter taking on Instagram?

Meanwhile reports on Wednesday suggested that Twitter is about to launch a short video service as a (sort of) rival to Instagram.

Twitter bought up the Vine service, a New York based start-up that was yet to launch, in October last year and now the Australian Financial Review reckons it will be relaunched Down Under in the coming weeks.

The idea behind Vine was to display portions of video recordings, trimmed down into six second clips, like so, from the company's co-founder Dom Hoffman.

The battle to be the elusive "Instagram of video" has sparked a number of new apps, services, and start-ups. all seeking that big payday. So far, the likes of Viddy, Tout and Socialcam haven't really caught on in the same way.

Twitter has declined to comment on the reports.

Via AFR