B/R writers can now easily embed tweets in their stories

When we asked Writer Program members for their wish list recently, near the top was the ability to easily embed tweets in stories. Well, start embedding.

The latest update of the content management system allows you to drop a tweet into your story seamlessly. All you need is the URL of the tweet. The embed URL also works. Plug either URL into the “Add Media” tool by clicking “Add Tweet,” and a lovely embedded tweet will appear in your story.

If you’re a Featured Columnist or Lead Writer, you can drag that tool to wherever you want it to go in your story and drop a tweet, photo, poll or video exactly where you want it. Those writers who haven’t made it to FC status don’t have that flexibility yet. The “Add Media” boxes appear in your stories in fixed locations.

But the flexibility is coming. The ability to embed tweets is merely the first step of a bigger rollout of new features in the CMS. “Draggable” media boxes for all writers are on their way. We expect to have them ready in the next few months.

But another new toy available today is the ability to set start a start time when embedding a YouTube video. If you click “Share this video” on a YouTube page, you can click the little box that generates a URL that includes a start time. This has been true for a long time. What’s new at Bleacher Report is that we now allow that functionality in our embeds.

No more making your readers sit or scroll through nine minutes of video to see what you want them to see at the 9:02 mark.

A note: You have to generate the url from that “share” link. You can’t just append something like “&t=1m10s” to the URL that appears in your browser address bar, even though that works on YouTube.com.

Enjoy, and keep your eyes open for more improvements to the CMS. We’re just getting started. The new system’s goal is to make it much easier for B/R writers to create rich media content experiences.