Twitter has released a new set of (easily) embeddable widgets that are cropping up all over the Internet.

These widgets make it easy to embed tweets, or even the results of a search (supporting a relatively complex set of search operators) within any web page. Twitter has done a nice job on these widgets; they are Javascript-based (so they run on devices that don't support Flash), are quite configurable, and are lively and dynamic.

In many contexts, Twitter is becoming a defacto chat room, albeit an asynchronous, persistent chat room--tuning into a hash tag is akin to tuning into a short wave radio frequency.

Columbia instructors are experimenting using Twitter as part of course discussions, and the widgets make it easier to embed into course sites like Wikispaces.

With powerful sets of tools like Hootsuite and CoTweet emerging to help manage multiple Twitter accounts, schedule tweets, and also transform RSS feeds into Twitter streams, microblogging continues to demonstrate its flexibility and versatility as a general purpose communications platform.