New Twitter Follow Button – What Does It Mean For You?

Twitter June 1, 2011 4 Comments

Twitter have been busy over the last couple of weeks trying to unify the platform by doing everything from buying Tweetdeck to launching their own photo sharing service and last night they announced a new Tweet button. It seems like a small enough update especially given the amount of sharing buttons that are out there at the moment but it’s more significant than you think and it’s all about increasing the amount of interaction on the site and to help Twitter build your social graph out further. One of the biggest problems that Twitter has is discovery and finding new people to follow is never easy but this simple button means that websites, blogs and celebrities will have an easy way to be found and instantly followed. So what does the new Twitter button mean and how can you take advantage of it…

Who Will Use This?

This is mostly for publishers and you can expect the button to start popping up on websites and blogs all over the web in the coming days. Most people already have some sort of follow us on Twitter button on their site but it is usually just a image that they have taken from somewhere and linked to their Twitter account. In that situation the user would have to click through to Twitter and then follow you which is a two step process whereas with this button they need never leave your page if they click follow and as long as they are logged in to their own twitter account. You can get your own follow button here.

Discovery

If you were to sum up in one word why this button was introduced then it has to be…discovery. Finding new people to follow on Twitter is never easy and truth be told it can be quite a painful experience on the site itself. There is a wealth of great information and your stream gets infinitely better if you make the time to follow people of interest to you but many of our timelines remain stagnant. With this simple button you won’t even have to think about adding new people as you’ll spot them on your travels around the web and your timeline will become populated with people and things that you like following without you even making much effort.

Twitter Are Still In The Identity Race

Facebook looked to have the online identity race pretty much wrapped up but Twitter are actually just about still in it. You can imagine that everybody from journalists and bloggers to celebrities and sports stars will be adding this to their personal websites, blogs and columns. This simple little button will become an easy way of identifying who somebody is and actually following their legitimate account. As people use their Twitter identity more and more it means that Twitter are still in the race to become your complete online identity. Facebook still more or less have it in the bag but this at least makes it a bit of a two horse race.

Unifying The Experience

What Twitter have been up to for the last 6 months is pretty much trying to take everything back in under their roof and unify the look and feel of the entire site and all the apps around it. This started with the mobile apps and then Tweetdeck and small changes like this show how much they care about the smaller parts of the service as well. Everybody had their own Twitter buttons on their website but they came in all shapes and sizes whereas with this simple update it looks like the Twitter experience will look and feel the same no matter where you are on the web.

Stimulating Interaction On The Site

You may have noticed that new Twitter followers tend to go in waves on the site, sometimes you’ll be getting lots of new people and at other times the site feels totally stagnant. What Twitter needs to do if it is to be as big a success as the likes of Facebook is continue to keep discovery and interaction on the site at interesting levels. They want you to constantly be adding new people while interacting and sharing as much information as possible. By introducing this simple little button on to websites the chances are that you are going to start following lots more people and that means that Twitter gets to know more about you and your interests which for them is like gold.

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