Jetpack 9.0 Introduces Loom Block, Twitter Threads Feature, and Facebook and Instagram oEmbeds

Jetpack’s highly anticipated 9.0 release has landed, introducing some of the new features the team has previewed over the past week. Users can now publish WordPress posts to Twitter as threads. This new feature is available as part of the Publicize module when you have connected a Twitter account.

Posting Twitter threads is a feature that only works with the block editor, as it takes advantage of how content is naturally split into chunks (blocks).

In the comments on his demo post, Automattic engineer Gary Pendergast gave a more detailed breakdown of the logic Jetpack uses to ensure full sentences aren’t broken up in the tweets.

“With the mental model now being focused on mapping blocks to tweets, it’s much easier to make logical decisions about how to handle each block,” Pendergast said. “So, a paragraph block is the text of a tweet, if the paragraph is too long for a single tweet, it tries to split the paragraph up by sentences. If a sentence is too long, then it resorts to splitting by words. Then, if there’s an embed/image/video/gallery block following that paragraph, we can attach it to the tweet containing that paragraph. There are additional rules for other blocks, but that’s the basic process. It then just iterates over all of the supported blocks in the post.”

Pendergast published his post as thread to demonstrate the new feature in action. The advantage of posting a thread from your WordPress site is that it doesn’t end up getting lost in Twitter’s fast-moving timeline. Most important Twitter threads evaporate from public consciousness almost as soon as they are published. Publishing threads from your website ensures they are better indexed and easier to reference in the future.

Jetpack Adds Loom Block for Embedding Screen Recordings

Loom was added to Jetpack as a new oEmbed provider three weeks ago. The video recording service allows for recording camera, microphone, and desktop simultaneously. The service is especially popular in educational settings. Jetpack 9.0 introduces a new Loom block for embedding recordings.

“Loom is growing in popularity as it is being recommended more and more to assist in distance learning efforts,” Jetpack Director of Innovation Jesse Friedman said. “Now more than ever we want to be able to help those working, learning, and teaching from home. The Loom block was a natural addition to join the other Jetpack video blocks which now include YouTube, TikTok, DailyMotion, and Vimeo.”

Loom’s free tier allows users to record up to 25 videos, but the Pro plan is free for educators. Friedman confirmed that Jetpack does not have any kind of partnership with Loom. The team decided to support the product to assist professionals, educators, and students. Having it available as a block also makes it more convenient for those using P2 for communication.

As anticipated, Jetpack 9.0 also provides a seamless transition necessary to ensure Instagram and Facebook embeds will continue working after Facebook drops unauthenticated oEmbed support on October 24. The Jetpack team reports that it “partnered with Facebook” to make sure these embeds continue to work with the WordPress.com REST API.