More on @Anywhere

So, Rich (@rmanalan), Anthony (@anthonyslai) and I (@jkuramot) are at Chirp (@chirp), the Twitter developer conference in San Francisco.

One of the many tidbits from yesterday’s sessions was the general release of the @Anywhere platform Evan Williams (@ev) announced at SXSW in March.

If you’re not already familiar, @Anywhere integrates Twitter into any website with only  a few lines of Javascript. Here’s what it supports:

• Auto-linkification of @usernames
• Hovercards
• Follow buttons
• Tweet Box
• User login & signup

Rich added @Anywhere here, specifically auto-linkification and hovercards. The others features didn’t seem terribly useful here.

Auto-linkification
In the past, each Twitter handle would need a link behind it, but now, simply typing @ and the handle will create the link. Like so: @ppedrazzi, @theappslab. I guess you’ll have to trust me, since you’re viewing the finished product.

Hovercards
I’ve seen several blogs sporting plugins that do this, so I suppose this is an area where Twitter could be filling holes.

The point of hovercards is to serve information about a Twitter handle and allow a quick follow without forcing the reader to leave the site. Launch a hovercard by hovering your cursor over a linked handle.

Clicking the follow button triggers OAuth, asking you to authorize the application.

Given the ease of implementation and the benefit of adding Twitter features without losing traffic, @Anywhere is a pretty slick set of features, nicely done. Rich and I were just chatting about the need for tweet aggregation around specific topics, and the @Anywhere platform seems like a logical place to add this in later releases.

Anyway, enjoy one of the early implementations of @Anywhere. I’ll need to remember to add handles more often to take advantage of it. More observations to come. Stay tuned.

Find the comments.

Update: Those people who got this in a feed reader will have to come here to see @Anywhere in all its glory. Wah-wah-wah.