Image via turtleteeth/Shutterstock
Twitter puts its use in modern news media to good use with the addition of related headlines to give context to individual tweets.
On the permalink page of certain newsworthy tweets there’ll be a new section headed ‘Related headlines’. These news stories are pulled from sites that have embedded the tweet in question and so offer a way to get the full story behind the 140-character comment.
As an example, Twitter uses NBA player Jason Collins – the first active athlete in the four major US sports to publicly come out. “I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay,” reads the first line of an article Collins co-wrote for the 6 May issue of Sports Illustrated.
News of Collins’ announcement spread quickly on Twitter and the story was picked up by a number of major news outlets, some of which embedded a tweet from Collins, giving thanks for the support he received.
Seeing this tweet out of context, users may have wondered what had made Collins so grateful and what he means by taking “the road less travelled”. Now, by clicking through to the tweet’s permalink, the context is revealed through the news stories filling in the gaps.
Main image by turtleteeth via Shutterstock
