Tweet Button Pulls Twitter Followers To Web Sites
07-Sep-2010
Not to be outdone by Facebook -- or even TweetMeme for that matter -- Twitter has officially rolled out its own Tweet Button for web sites. The Tweet Button lets users link to content on third-party sites with a mouse click.
Let's say you are on CNN.com (which happens to be one of the early adopters of the Tweet Button) and you read an article that wows you. The Tweet Button lets you click a link and share the article with your friends via your Twitter account. No need to cut and paste the URL, shrink it down to size with bit.ly, or jump through any other hoops. The Tweet Button does all that automatically.
"Twitter is great for sharing interesting things you find on the web. In fact, close to a quarter of all Tweets include a link in them," a Twitter rep wrote on the company blog. "Despite the high volume of sharing, there is plenty of room to make it easier. Copying and pasting, link shortening, and bouncing between browser tabs just to share a link in a Tweet is too much work."
Expanding Twitter's Universe
Twitter's Tweet Button capabilities don't stop with simple sharing. After you post a story to Twitter, you may also see suggestions for other Twitter users to follow. Twitter bases these suggestions on the web site you visited. The list of suggestions may even include CNN.com, if you posted an article from CNN, or the reporter who wrote the article.
"The Tweet Button is not only simple for users, but for publishers of all sizes, too. Recreational bloggers to large media companies can quickly and easily add the Tweet Button to their sites," the Twitter rep said. "It only takes a few lines of code. The Tweet Button will help publishers grow traffic and increase their Twitter following."
Thirty sites joined Twitter for the launch of the Tweet Button. You'll begin to see the button on sites like Ask.com, CBS Interactive, eHow.com, YouTube, Hulu, Time.com, WordPress.com and more within a week. Twitter expects additional publishers to come aboard in the months ahead.
Partnering for Profit
Although there are several third-party tweet buttons on the web already, Twitter is forging ahead with its own effort. But Twitter isn't starting from scratch. The company partnered with TweetMeme on the project. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
"Digg and Delicious started this trend a while ago, and the goal was to drive traffic to those aggregation sites. So this is nothing new. Twitter is just introducing its own button," said Brad Shimmin, an analyst at Current Analysis. "This lets Twitter take responsibility for the content coming to their site, which lets them customize and build on it a little more."
That said, Shimmin sees the fast follow feature as potentially valuable because it lets Twitter broaden its user base without creating roadblocks. Twitter can now bring in people who may be interested in seeing what is going on and using Twitter as a news source but not participating as an active member, he said.
By Jennifer LeClaire
CRM-Daily
Twitter has rolled out a Tweet Button for web sites a la Facebook's Like button. So if you see something cool on a web site, you can press the Tweet Button to send the link to your followers without the cut-and-paste hassle. Thirty web sites are participating in the launch of Twitter's Tweet Button. It could bring Twitter new users as well.
Not to be outdone by Facebook -- or even TweetMeme for that matter -- Twitter has officially rolled out its own Tweet Button for web sites. The Tweet Button lets users link to content on third-party sites with a mouse click.
Let's say you are on CNN.com (which happens to be one of the early adopters of the Tweet Button) and you read an article that wows you. The Tweet Button lets you click a link and share the article with your friends via your Twitter account. No need to cut and paste the URL, shrink it down to size with bit.ly, or jump through any other hoops. The Tweet Button does all that automatically.
"Twitter is great for sharing interesting things you find on the web. In fact, close to a quarter of all Tweets include a link in them," a Twitter rep wrote on the company blog. "Despite the high volume of sharing, there is plenty of room to make it easier. Copying and pasting, link shortening, and bouncing between browser tabs just to share a link in a Tweet is too much work."
Expanding Twitter's Universe
Twitter's Tweet Button capabilities don't stop with simple sharing. After you post a story to Twitter, you may also see suggestions for other Twitter users to follow. Twitter bases these suggestions on the web site you visited. The list of suggestions may even include CNN.com, if you posted an article from CNN, or the reporter who wrote the article.
"The Tweet Button is not only simple for users, but for publishers of all sizes, too. Recreational bloggers to large media companies can quickly and easily add the Tweet Button to their sites," the Twitter rep said. "It only takes a few lines of code. The Tweet Button will help publishers grow traffic and increase their Twitter following."
Thirty sites joined Twitter for the launch of the Tweet Button. You'll begin to see the button on sites like Ask.com, CBS Interactive, eHow.com, YouTube, Hulu, Time.com, WordPress.com and more within a week. Twitter expects additional publishers to come aboard in the months ahead.
Partnering for Profit
Although there are several third-party tweet buttons on the web already, Twitter is forging ahead with its own effort. But Twitter isn't starting from scratch. The company partnered with TweetMeme on the project. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
"Digg and Delicious started this trend a while ago, and the goal was to drive traffic to those aggregation sites. So this is nothing new. Twitter is just introducing its own button," said Brad Shimmin, an analyst at Current Analysis. "This lets Twitter take responsibility for the content coming to their site, which lets them customize and build on it a little more."
That said, Shimmin sees the fast follow feature as potentially valuable because it lets Twitter broaden its user base without creating roadblocks. Twitter can now bring in people who may be interested in seeing what is going on and using Twitter as a news source but not participating as an active member, he said.
By Jennifer LeClaire
CRM-Daily
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