14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter has unveiled the official Tweet Button, as expected. The feature enables websites to provide a simple way for their users to share a link on Twitter. There have been other ways of doing this, but Twitter has recently started offering more services by itself and relying less on third-parties.
“Today we’re launching the Tweet Button to make sharing simple. It lets you share links directly from the page you’re on,” Twitter said.
“When you click on the Tweet Button, a Tweet box will appear -- pre-populated with a shortened link that points to the item that you’re sharing,” the announcement added.
The Tweet Button is pretty straightforward, but packs a few interesting twists. Website owners can implement it simply by pasting a small snippet of code. Depending on the style of button they choose, it can feature a tweet counter besides the actual button. While there are several ways of doing this already, the TweetMeme button probably being the most popular, Twitter has the advantage of playing on the ‘home field.’
The most obvious example is the fact that the Tweet Button counter doesn’t just list the number of times people have used it but how many times has the link been shared on Twitter, even if it originated from Twitter.com or any of the mobile and desktop apps.
There’s another nice touch, after the user has finished writing the tweet, the overlay pop-up will suggest several accounts, related to that particular site, to follow. This could be the official Twitter account of the site, or the accounts of its editors. The website owners get to decide what accounts to suggest.
Twitter also made an interesting announcement, it has actually partnered with TweetMeme for its own Tweet Button. Ever since Twitter has started moving more aggressively into territories occupied by third-parties, developers are starting to be worried that they’ll get pushed out of the business they worked to build.
In a way, this has happened with TweetMeme, it will abandon its own solution and will instead link to the official Tweet Button. The nice part is that Twitter has actually licensed some technology from TweetMeme and has struck a deal with the company, instead of just launching the button and crushing the startup. TweetMeme is now working on new products, one that it has already announced, DataSift, leverages the Twitter Firehose.