BackTweets.com scours Twitter for URLs and shortened URLs to display all tweets that link to the page you submit. Similar web services that do this, at best, provide "badges" or images which calculate how many tweets your web page has gotten and require a clickthru from the visitor in order to read the corresponding tweets which BackTweets/BackType display on their own websites.

Twitter automatically shortens URLs entered into their submission form into a bit.ly address (and many users either use Twitter software clients that automate this process for them, or select their own shortening service) in order to save precious character space.

Unfortunately, Twitter's database does not connect these shortened URLs with their original (long) version. Subsequently it's impossible to perform a search on Twitter.com for specific web URLs since most have been converted into a shorter counterpart. Luckily, thanks to the Backtweets.com, the original and shortened URLs matches are connected together whenever one is posted to Twitter.

I commissioned my developer friend Ken Browning to utilize the Backtweets API with jQuery to display these tweets directly on the webpages that they correspond to. This not only reduces the amount of "work" a visitor has to do to see these twittered comments about the content, but also connects these conversations together.

This integration and fusion of Twitter with web content builds a unique two-way promotional relationship with content producers and Twitter conversationalists. Twitter users can have their opinions shown on sites other than Twitter giving them more visibility in the content they are interacting with. Additionally, web content authors receive the promotional benefits Twitter provides as these users are more inclined to share your site with the Twitter community at large.