TweetMeme Gadget for Blogger

Two in one day?  Monsieur, with these plugins you are really spoiling us!

Hot on the heels of the TypePad Widget we now bring you a Blogger Gadget.  This is a simple way to add the TweetMeme retweet button to your blog and place the button where you want it on your blog page without the need for editing your templates, all using the native Page Elements interface.

To get started just make your way over to the How to add the TweetMeme Gadget to Blogger page and follow the steps.

TweetMeme Widget for TypePad

Ever wished it was a little simpler to add our retweet button to your blog?  Well in continuing our steps to making your lives easier we’re pleased to announce the TweetMeme TypePad Widget!  There is now a new page in the plugins section of the site which has all the great options to customise your button and how it retweets, and even has a live preview so you can see how it will all look before it’s added to your TypePad blog.

Unfortunately TypePad’s API only allows widgets to be added to those blogs using Drag-and-Drop Design Templates so if you are using Advanced Templates you will, for the moment at least, need to continue using the manual insert method described in our help page How to Add a TweetMeme Button to your TypePad Blog.

Head over to the TweetMeme TypePad Widget page to customise your button and get it added to your blog!
By default, the widget will be installed at the bottom of your side-bar but you are free to re-organise if you wish through the Organize Content section of your Design tab.

Support for many more sites is on the way.

You spoke, we listened – Retwt.me Bookmarklet

We have just updated our latest pet project Retwt.me with the most-requested feature of the past few days – a bookmarklet!

You can now shorten using Retwt.me from wherever on the web you happen to be. Just follow the instructions on the Bookmarklet page and you’ll be on your way in seconds.

We’ve also made a small change to the Analyse page – you can now put just an Alias (e.g. the “1″ in http://retwt.me/1) to quickly get Stats for a short URL.

If you have any other feature requests be sure to let us know – try the support forum, Twitter, or Contact Us.

Shorten It: Most popular URL shorteners

We’ve all used them: services that allow us to take that horrendously long URL and compress it into a manageable size so it won’t take up too many precious characters in our tweets.

Here at Tweetmeme, we’re constantly downloading and storing your tweets with links in, so we’re in a unique position of being able to tell you exactly how many of you are using which URL-shortening service, and how they’re competing. We’ve taken a couple of weeks worth of data from Tweetmeme , and compiled the top 5 URL shorteners.

 
As you can see, Tinyurl.com is clearly in the lead at the moment – this is most probably because it is the default service that both Twitter and Twhirl use (TweetDeck uses Bit.ly by default, but can use others) to shorten users’ URLs when required.

But we can do more than that – we’ve stored data from when the links are posted over time, so we can show you how the use is trending over time.

 
Use of top 5 URL shortening services over a 2-week period.

 
Close-up of services not including Tinyurl.com.