Twitter CEO unveils '@Anywhere' platform

This article was written by Caroline McCarthy of CNET News.com.

AUSTIN, Texas--Twitter CEO Evan Williams took no time in getting to the juicy part of his keynote address at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival on Monday afternoon. He announced the "@Anywhere" platform, a way to pull Twitter links and data onto partner sites and media outlets.

A brief demo of @Anywhere showed off "hovercards" that bring up Twitter information with a mouse-over, let readers or users connect with their Twitter accounts much like Facebook Connect, or explore more specific possibilities, like instantly following a newspaper columnist's Twitter account by clicking on his or her byline.

"Discovery is one of the hardest challenges," Williams said. "It's putting these in context where you're already aware of them...Twitter is a very easy way to keep in touch."

The company has 13 launch partners, including Digg, The New York Times, MSNBC.com, eBay, Amazon, and Bing.

As Williams describes it, "it's not an ad platform, it's an '@' platform," referring to the syntax of using the '@' symbol to denote communication between individual Twitter users.

You can read the full story at CNET News.com.

By Caroline McCarthy