Twitter is turning off its @Anywhere developer platform in December. Instead, websites wanting to include links to Twitter will need to use Twitter for Website widgets instead.

Twitter's announcement that @Anywhere is being closed down from December 6, 2012 is unwelcome news for any website owners who have used this facility to add features such as Follow Buttons and Tweet Boxes to their sites.

According to the post Sunsetting @Anywhere by Jason Costa on the Twitter developers blog, the family of products that constitute Twitter for Websites will provide an easy-to-use alternative.

He points out that the newer set of widgets have improved upon many of the features introduced with @Anywhere: Tweet box, follow, linkify a @username and sign-in. The hovercard isn’t included in the new widget because Twitter hasn’t seen it deliver the hoped for value to users.

The latest addition to Widgets is an embeddable timeline, which make it easy to syndicate any public Twitter timeline to your website with one line of code.

Even so pulling the plug on the original set of tools is likely to be seen an an unnecessary  and draconian measure. It is a timely reminder that using an API always carries a risk that it will be discontinued.