After news surfaced about Twitter rolling out an official button, the micro blogging company has finally unveiled their shiny new button for the masses.
While an official Twitter button was inevitable, the fact that Twitter chose to partner with TweetMeme was (refreshingly) surprising.
Today we’re launching the Tweet Button to make sharing simple. It lets you share links directly from the page you’re on. 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. […]
You may have seen similar buttons on blogs, news sites and other places that let you share content on Twitter. These have been created by third parties. Most notably, a company called TweetMeme created a popular “retweet button” for publishers. They’ve already made it easier to share links on Twitter and have helped a tremendous number of publishers get their content into Twitter. We’re pleased to be working closely with the good folks at TweetMeme and, from here on out, they will be pointing to the Twitter Tweet Button. (Official Twitter Blog)
What distinguishes Twitter’s official button from many third party options is the fact that after someone tweets your post, you can suggest users accounts for your tweet loving reader to follow (as seen in the video below).
Twitter’s partnership with Tweetmeme was an ingenious move, as it not only saved the company time implementing (and launching) an official button, but also displays that Twitter isn’t in the business of displacing developers.
Twitter has also announced partnerships with a number of sites to implement the new Twitter button including CNN, The Onion, YouTube and WordPress.com (who previously came out with their own like button).
Currently Tweetmeme and AddThis are the only major WordPress plugins that support the official Twitter button, although that will probably change in the next few hours.
Note: if any developers are currently working on a plugin, feel free to let us all know in the comment section below.
Update: Corrected article above.
