Are you looking to create a simple link to retweet a page, but you don’t need a fancy Tweetmeme counter with it? Try something like this:
<a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=RT @redwall_hp <?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="Retweet this page">Tweet it!</a>
When clicked, it takes the visitor to Twitter, where it fills-in the update box for you.
Just be sure to change “@redwall_hp” to your username.
Hey, remember the epic saga of Tr.im announcing they were going to close, then deciding that they weren’t going to after all? The sequel has arrived! The Cli.gs shortener is shutting down now, though they’re handling it much better. You’ll be able to export your data, and the URLs will also be archived in the 301works project.
Also, the developer behind Cli.gs isn’t taking potshots at Bit.ly for being the default shortener for Twitter, like Tr.im did, and went so far as to state in a comment on Mashable:
I’d like to emphasize that having bit.ly as the default for Twitter is in no way part of the decision to shut down. As I said in the post, it’s a one man operation that has grown too big for me to maintain it.
That is what I call a professional attitude.
As I’ve mentioned a few times before, Atebits’ Tweetie for Mac is my favorite desktop Twitter client. (And many people also enjoy the $2.99 Tweetie iPhone application from the same developer.)
What has developer Loren Brichter been doing in the wake of the applications’ popularity? Writing Tweetie 2.0, of course! Tweetie 2 for iPhone is nearing it’s release, and Tweetie 2 for Mac is in the works as well.
At the same time I knew that Tweetie 1.x could only go so far. Like the original Mac OS, it blended an intuitiveness with a well rounded set of features. But the “core” needed to be replaced. Not one to rest on my laurels, I started Project Bigbird, which was a new Twitter “core” meant to last.
What is hoped to be the final beta of the new Tweetie for iPhone has been sent to Apple for approval. It includes the “Project Bigbird” core that has been built into Tweetie for Mac since its beginning. It only works on OS 3.0+, as it has plenty of new features, some of which make use of APIs added in OS 3.x.
Continue reading →
As you may know, my favorite desktop client is Tweetie for Mac. If you use Twitter through a desktop client (whether it’s Tweetie or some other), you probably wish you could click those green retweet buttons and have them open in your client instead of taking you to Twitter.com.
Now you can, at least, if you use Tweetie for Mac.
I whipped-up a quick Greasemonkey script, known as Tweetie Retweet URL Replacer, that rewrites any Tweetmeme button you come across to load the retweet into Tweetie.
This works on the same principle as the bookmarklet that Atebits supplies on the Tweetie website.
At the present, the userscript only works with Tweetmeme buttons, but I may expand it to include other popular widgets in the future.
If you follow social media coverage much, you’ve probably heard already through Mashable or TechCrunch: Twitter is rethinking the retweet, and integrating native API calls for retweeting into the service.
Remember all the hoopla about Tr.im closing down their service? Well, they changed their mind.
We have restored tr.im, and re-opened its website. We have been absolutely overwhelmed by the popular response, and the countless public and private appeals I have received to keep tr.im alive.
We have answered those pleas. Nambu will keep tr.im operating going forward, indefinitely, while we continue to consider our options in regards to tr.im’s future.
They still want to sell, but they’re not shutting everything down as they had initially intended. (As @atomicpoet put it: “Seriously, can’t these guys even commit to the cause of quitting?”)
Tr.im still claims that the reason that they want to get out of the “URL shortening business” is that Twitter has stacked the deck against them.
Continue reading →
Nambu Networks has announced that they will be shutting down their Tr.im URL shortener. New links are no longer being created, and existing short URLs will cease to function on December 31, 2009.
Regretfully, we here at Nambu have decided to shutdown tr.im, the first step in shutting down all of our products and services within that brand.
tr.im did well for what it was, but, alas, it was not enough. We simply cannot find a way to justify continuing to work on it, or pay its network costs, which are not inconsequential. tr.im pushes (as I write this) a lot of redirects and URL creations per day, and this required significant development investment and server expansion to accommodate.
This is what a lot of doomsayers (doombloggers?) have been afraid of. Imagine the millions of Tr.im short URLs that will no longer work once the service goes down, despite the fact that the location they point to still exists: Link rot, as it is called, on a massive scale.
Continue reading →
Last Tuesday Twitter unveiled their redesign of their homepage. The change is intended to help remedy peoples’ inability to grasp the concept of Twitter, putting trending topics and a search field front-and-center. Instead of promoting to new users the ability to say what they’re doing, they’re pushing the idea that they use Twitter to “share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world.”
Defining a “tweet” for the uninitiated and explaining how to create an account doesn’t resonate with everyone. “Why would I want to do that?” is a common reaction. However, demonstrating the power of Twitter as a discovery engine for what is happening right now through our Search and Trends often awakens a sense of wonder which inevitably leads to a much more compelling question, “How do I get involved?”
The popular URL shortening service Ow.ly has recently come under fire on Twitter, and is being criticized for “framejacking.” (Framejacking is an unpleasant trick that was employed quite a lot in the late nineties, where someone would load others’ web pages into a frameset along with their own branding and ads. Example.)
I ask you, is what Ow.ly does bad?
How does this thin toolbar, as you can see above in the image, harm you or your website in any way? The bar is thin and unobtrusive. There are no paid ads, and the Ow.ly logo is tiny.
I argue that Ow.ly is useful to your social media-connected readers, and to you. The short URLs are easily shareable on Twitter, like any URL shorteners’, and the toolbar puts Tweet and Share buttons in easy reach, which can score you some retweets, Diggs, and Stumbles, which may lead to more traffic for you.
As a prolific Twitter user, when I read an interesting article, whether it be from Twitter or no, the first thing I do after is post it to Twitter. I have a handy bookmarklet that opens my desktop client (Tweetie) and dumps the link and page title into it. Not everyone has such a thing. People who enjoy Twittering, but aren’t quite as obsessed as I am, often use the Twitter.com web interface. Ow.ly’s convenient Tweet link makes posting an article a snap. Which saves the poster time, and it benefits the publisher.
Continue reading →
I previously wrote a post about how some blogs are displaying their RSS subscriber and Twitter follower counts. Mac AppStorm is combining their Twitter and RSS counts into one number, and FreelanceSwitch has a section in their footer with separate readouts for RSS, Twitter, and their podcast. Today I’d like to show you how to actually implement such a thing.
We’ll be using PHP and cURL to retrieve the numbers, and then caching them in the database with WordPress’s Continue reading →get_option() and update_option() functions, so we don’t slow things down or use-up your Twitter API limit.
©2006-2024 Webmaster-Source