• CNET, Thursday, June 14, 2012 11:10 AM

Like the portals of old, Web leaders like Google, Facebook and Twitter fight  to promote their positions as gateways for online content. To that end, Twitter is partnering with an array of online media companies to expand the variety of content users can preview within tweets. The microblogging site has introduced an enhanced version of "expanded Tweets," which lets users preview stories, images, and videos linked to within tweets.

“While Twitter already offered the ability to see Instagram photos or watch YouTube videos, the site is now partnering with a ‘diverse and growing group’ of media sites such as The Wall Street Journal and Time to deliver richer content in tweets,” CNet reports. In a blog post, Michael Sippey, director of Twitter's product team, explains: "When you expand a Tweet linking to a news article by The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle or Der Spiegel Online, you can see a preview with the headline, the introduction and sometimes the Twitter accounts of the publisher and writer … You can continue to read the article, follow these accounts, and reply, favorite or retweet the Tweet."

As CNet notes, Twitter is promising that the feature will present images from TMZ and BuzzFeed, as well as video from BET, Lifetime, and Dailymotion.

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