#FF00AA

The feature lets sites embed key Twitter features without having to send users off to Twitter’s home page. By hovering the cursor on a name, for instance, viewers can see the person’s Twitter handle and how many people are following them and click a button to follow that person’s Twitter stream – without having to go to Twitter’s site. To see how a pop-up window could look, check out the screen shot on the left.

I’m really impatient to find out if they go the Facebook way and encourage their users to enter their password on any old third-party site that asks for it — with Twitter’s recent emphasis on OAuth as a more secure way to authenticate apps, there’s a chance they might be security-conscious enough to avoid that pitfall, but if they really want to go after Facebook Connect it’s not gonna be that simple.