Jeff Chandler has a short, interesting article up on Performancing about Tweetmeme, and the explosive popularity of their “Retweet This” widgets, which make it easy to retweet a post (and display a count of the number of times it has been retweeted).
If you couldn’t tell by now, the whole thing works much in the same was as Digg with a few notable exceptions. First, there are no comments for the stories on the Tweetmeme website. There is also no way to bury a story because if it’s not popular, it won’t show up on the front page anyways. There are no categories so the front page has a higher chance of maintaining a diverse round of stories.
I like the trend, as I’ve become a bit of a Twitter fan in recent months, and I’ve become…less than fond of Digg. Their front page is too stale (especially the Technology section, as I’ve seen most of the content the day before), and the vitriol and hypocrisy levels have reached too high a point. Twitter’s viral effect can drive a bit of traffic to a site as retweets are retweeted, and the traffic is a much better quality.
I often post links to my Twitter account, and retweet some of the more interesting ones from people I follow. I quite like the idea of making it easier to post a page I’m reading to Twitter, and to have a bit of a measure of how far that page is spreading.
Is Retweet The Next Digg This? by Jeff Chandler [Performancing.com]
