It’s easier than ever to add another dimension to your posts with embedded videos or tweets: announcing the Media Explorer, a new media curation tool that lets you add trending content from Twitter and YouTube without ever leaving your post editor!

To access the Media Explorer, simply click “Add Media” while editing a post, as you would to insert a photo. You’ll see a couple of new options below the familiar image tools: Insert Media The Twitter Explorer lets you find tweets by keyword or hashtag, by tweets to or from a specific user, and by geographic location — search for tweets using any of those parameters right in the same window: Insert Tweet Want eyewitness stories on some breaking news? You can pull tweets from people on the ground into your blog ASAP — the geographic search is the next best thing to having someone there: Twitter Geolocation The YouTube Explorer changes the way you’ll find video to embed into your posts. Before, you opened a separate browser tab, went to YouTube, searched for the video, and then copied/pasted the URL back into your post. Now, you can find the perfect clip and embed it — no leaving the edit screen, and no URL needed: Insert from YouTube For more on how it works, check out this video demonstration:

The Media Explorer will be coming to Jetpack soon, so self-hosted WordPress sites can also take advantage of easy embeds. (If you’re interested, you can find the code on GitHub.) If you’d like to learn more about how it was developed, take a look at this post from John Blackbourn of Code for the People, our partner in making this happen.

Happy embedding!