Slowly but surely, Twitter is taking control of all the key features that make it such a powerful communication medium. Today, it is introducing the Tweet button, a way for Websites to get visitors to share stories and links with one click. Of course, this already exists in various forms, the most popular of which is the Retweet button created by TweetMeme, which is on so many sites (including ours) that it currently generates 750 million impressions a day. Well, that is all very likely going away. "We expect people to switch," says Tweetmeme founder Nick Halstead, "and we support that."
Twitter is killing TweetMeme's Retweet button, but with love. It is licensing some of the technology developed by TweetMeme and has a business agreement in place. However, the code that powers the new Tweet button was written from scratch by Twitter. TweetMeme Pro will continue to exist for Websites that want more customized solutions and analytics, but TweetMeme is shifting is business to a new product that has yet to launch called Datasift, which will focus on curating different realtime streams. From Twitter's perspective, head of product Jason Goldman says, "We think that there is an experience that we can offer that is more integrated with the Twitter accounts people already have."
