Twitter lets users login from Amazon and eBay

The tool is similar to Facebook's Connect service, which lets people log in to other websites using their Facebook details and interact with friends.

Initially, 13 sites will adapt the @anywhere service, including Amazon, eBay and The New York Times.

@anywhere will allow people using Amazon or the New York Times to follow new users or share media directly from the page.

Evan Williams, Twitter CEO, said:  “It’s only scratching the surface. These big partners aren’t the only ones we want to limit it to.’’

"Imagine being able to follow a New York Times journalist directly from her byline, tweet about a video without leaving YouTube, and discover new Twitter accounts while visiting the Yahoo home page," Twitter said on its blog.

Developers can already add Twitter functionality to their sites using a so-called API (application programming interface). APIs are a set of tools offered by a firm to allow people outside the company to access and manipulate data held about their users.

They have become increasingly common amongst web firms to extend their reach beyond their own website.

Twitter said that @anywhere was a "different approach" that would be simpler for many sites to use.

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