Twitter creator Evan Williams was expected to announce an ad platform at this year's South by Southwest festival and conference, but instead, a new service was announced which was inclusive of many major media partners. It was not an advertising platform, but something called @anywhere.

The launch included no description and no screenshots of how might will look like. It just included the logos of partners such as eBay, Yahoo! and Digg.

Judging by what little information Twitter has shared, @anywhere would let readers of online articles at The New York Times and other similar websites to click and directly follow authors from their "bylines". Also, it would make it possible for readers to click and see all the information on popular and frequent Twitter users who are featured on a participating website, simply through a pop-up window, triggered by placing the mouse over a link. The whole process would be like the hover pop-ups found at Twitter. com.

@anywhere seems to be a challenger to Facebook Connect, which would allow users to log in with their Twitter ID and then integrate their activities on the website into their Twitter stream, although it is not clear how.

Twitter's VP of Communications, Sean Garrett, in an email revealed that @anywhere "will initially provide sign-in and sign-up capabilities, hovercard integration, the ability to present curated suggested user lists and other means to experience Twitter without leaving a participating site”.