Twitter on 12 August introduced its much anticipated Tweet Button for websites to install and let users share links directly from the web page they’re viewing.
When users click the Tweet Button, a Tweet box will appear prepopulated with a shortened link that points to the item that users wish to share with their Twitter followers.
The Tweet Button means websites will no longer have to copy, paste and shorten links from services such as Bit.ly before publishing them to Twitter. Websites can install Tweet Button with a few code snippets.
The tool is a no-brainer at a time when more than 100 million Twitter users are crawling the web and retweeting everything of interest to them.
The Tweet Button also co-opts the chief task of TweetMeme, whose own retweet buttons eWEEK and several other websites have used for a year or so.
It’s the latest example of Twitter building and promoting its own software products after third-party programmers have already capitalised on Twitter’s platform APIs.
Earlier this year, Twitter scared developers by issuing its own BlackBerry, Android and iPhone apps.
Cannibalising the developer ecosystem could haunt Twitter as long as it keeps building its own versions of solutions that already populate the market.
However, Twitter seems to have done right by TweetMeme, with whom it now has an integration and data deal. Whenever users click on the TweetMeme button installed on a website, users will be pointed to the Tweet Button.
TweetMeme founder and chief executive Nick Halstead said TweetMeme is assisting Twitter with the “technical challenges involved with the button” and is launching new products that leverage Twitter’s Firehose API.
The first of these is DataSift, which helps third-party developers tune tweets through a graphical interface or TweetMeme’s bespoke programming language.
Meanwhile, Twitter has secured 30 websites to use the Tweet Button upon launch. These include Google’s YouTube property, Ask.com, SFGate.com, The Onion and Time.com.
Suspended prison sentence for Craig Wright for “flagrant breach” of court order, after his false…
Cash-strapped south American country agrees to sell or discontinue its national Bitcoin wallet after signing…
Google's change will allow advertisers to track customers' digital “fingerprints”, but UK data protection watchdog…
Welcome to Silicon In Focus Podcast: Tech in 2025! Join Steven Webb, UK Chief Technology…
European Commission publishes preliminary instructions to Apple on how to open up iOS to rivals,…
San Francisco jury finds Nima Momeni guilty of second-degree murder of Cash App founder Bob…
View Comments
This is great, because we do not have to leave a page in order to submit a tweet
Hi guys, we have recently joined twitter and i did not at the time copy the scpit to put the twitter botton on our website. How do I get the button onto our website now?