On its company blog, Twitter.com recently announced a new interactive feature in which designated tweets can be expanded on the twitter.com and mobile.twitter.com websites. Now, instead of links taking users to a separate page, the link content will open/expend under the tweet itself.

This feature, however, only works for a growing number of Twitter partners like The Wall Street Journal, Breaking News,  The New York Times, Time magazine, and Der Spiegel Online whose tweets often contain rich content including articles, videos and photos. Linked videos for shows like BET’s 106 & Park will also play in the expanded view.

However, the expanded tweet feature doesn’t seem to work on all the designated tweets. Photos for example, with “pic.twitter.com” in their URL will expand, while other links will take you to new web browser page. If you tap on a tweet with an “instgr.am” link, it will also expand. But tapping a tweet with a “bit.ly” link will not.

Also, when you tap on the tweet, on say mobile.twitter.com, the expansion feature work automatically, so there’s no need to tap on the link itself, which will take you to another source page for the link instead of expanding in the tweet. Users can still use menu items for writing, replying, following and retweeting tweets and contacts.

The microblogging site says the expanded tweet feature will also be added soon to Twitter for the iPhone and Android. Expanded tweets would be a very useful feature in other other Twitter apps as well.

Source: Twitter Blog