Rumor-mongers were worked up (as they tend to be) about the prospect of Twitter announcing an ad platform at the 2010 SxSW Interactive Conference. Evan Williams, in a keynote interview conducted by Umair Haque, instead announced that Twitter will be launching not an ad platform but an “at platform” — essentially a neat repackaging of Twitter’s Oauth and API features.
(We called it. In reality, no one at Twitter ever promised an announcement about advertising. The rumors were basically wishful thinking on the part of people who are dying to know how Twitter will ride into the sunset.)
The “at platform” that Williams announced is called @anywhere, and it brings Twitter functionality to the rest of the web. Log in to your favorite news websites with Twitter, and find and follow people from a website without going to Twitter. We at 140 Proof think anything that brings more of Twitter to the web is a great thing. (After all, if Twitter’s on it, 140 Proof can target it.)
For more about the SxSW announcement, Adweek summed up the talk:
Twitter was widely expected to take the wraps off its ad platform at the South by Southwest conference today. Instead, CEO Evan Williams threw the crowd for a loop by instead unveiling an information-sharing tool for publishers.
The @anywhere service lets publishers embed code on their sites that will turn hyperlinks of key terms on Web pages into repositories of Twitter information. SXSW’s notoriously fickle crowds lived up to their reputation, complaining via Twitter that the interview was boring with many leaving the session early.
Photo of Evan Williams (CC) Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com
