Facebook "share link" feature feature for Blogger, Google Buzz, or other Blogs?

Question

Facebook has a nice share feature to share links.

When I share a link on Facebook, I paste a URL into the status box (The box which says "What's on your mind?"). Facebook will automatically populate my post with a some interesting text from the article and an image thumbnail from the article. I like this, because it saves me time and provides an interesting image to the viewers.

For example, if I paste http://flowingdata.com/2010/06/10/context-to-underwater-depths into the status box on Facebook, the application will know this is a URL, grab some text from the article, and create a thumbnail of the image. I can often choose between multiple thumbnails. If I then hit the 'Share' button, the text and thumbnail will be posted as an entry to my profile.

Is there a similar feature which I can use for my blog hosted on Blogger?

I've tried several different methods to replicate this feature. I'm trying to post to my blog on Blogger or on Google Buzz using Google's "BlogThis!" bookmarklet, and Google Toolbar 'Share' button. However, these tools just prepopulate the post with a simple hyperlink. There is no image thumbnail, no relevant text from the article, etc.

Answer 1

What facebook uses is called oEmbed - there is an oEmbed plugin for wordpress, and it shouldn't be super hard to create one for blogger.

In addition, if you need more than the sites that officially support oEmbed, you can try oohEmbed, which supports a very long list of sites.

Answer 2

Just for fun I did a small tool for doing what you want. It can be accessed here:

http://diva.innox.com.mx/share_this.php

for example:

http://diva.innox.com.mx/share_this.php?url=http://flowingdata.com/2010/06/10/context-to-underwater-depths/

It is lack of features, and needs work but if you like where all this is going, I can improve it the app for a javascript or blogger plugin. Just let me know.