Today Twitter launched a new tool that enables publishers to embed interactive timelines on websites.

Previously, widgets — for example, WordPress’ Twitter widget — allowed you to highlight tweets from your Twitter account. However, visitors could only read through your tweets as the widget wasn’t very interactive.

Moving forward, your visitors will now be able to reply, retweet, favorite a tweet, view photos, and even follow you directly from the embedded timeline. According to Twitter, this feature isn’t just limited to tweets; timelines can feature any account’s tweets, favorites, lists, or a search query or hashtag.

This is a great addition to company blogs as it allows you to draw attention to your social networking presence without sending your visitors to another website. It’s especially valuable if you want to display tweets around a specific campaign or event.

You can create a timeline through the new timeline settings page on Twitter.com. After you’ve customized your widget, just copy and paste the embed code on your website. You can see the new timeline in action on Twitter’s blog.

[Image credit: chollingsworth3]