Twitter has been testing a number of interesting new features lately. We’ve already covered the “TV Trending” and nearby events timeline boxes, the former displays tweets and additional information about a TV show that’s trending on Twitter. The latter displays tweets about an event taking place near a user. While the micro-blogging service is yet to roll out both of these features, today it announced the addition of a new feature that will provide context behind a tweet that one can’t usually fit in 140 characters.
From today users will start seeing the “Related headlines” section on tweets that have been embedded on websites. The section will be viewable from a tweet’s permalink page, lists and links to websites where the tweet has been embedded will be displayed. This will make it easier to find out the entire story behind a particular tweet. Twitter gives the example of Jason Collins, the first NBA player who came out publicly. The news obviously spread across media outlets such as MSNBC and ESPN, and they embedded his tweet. Links to their websites are now being displayed underneath Jason’s tweet as they provide additional context that wasn’t directly available on Twitter. Rumor has it that Twitter might turn this into a revenue source as well, charging advertisers if they want their websites to show up in related headlines. Twitter hasn’t said anything about this just yet though.
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