We are soon launching a new TweetMeme but first we have a new member of the family, retwt.me.

KISS

We like to apply the KISS principle to everything we do, and retwt.me is KISS at its best, three simple functions.

• 1. Shorten – Give us a link and in fraction of a second we will have shortened it
• 2. Share – We give you simple tools to share the link out to your favorite sites
• 3. Analyse – A simple service means easy, simple to understand analytics

Future

We have no plans to extend the service beyond these very simple principles, it will be used initially within TweetMeme to shorten comment links and added into the ‘pool’ of available shorteners.

I was testing the new site tonight and thought I would share a quick (5 min) video of using the comments. Look forward to getting your feedback and also putting this baby live! (click in bottom-right corner of video to get the high-res version.)

I wanted to share a few numbers about the growth of TweetMeme and explain why so many users are using our service. In the last 30 days we have served 1.6 billion retweet buttons, and we seeing an average growth of 20% week-on-week. The list of sites who trust our brand and our scalability read like the who’s who of the blog world The Huffingtonpost, Techcrunch, Mashable and perezhilton to name but a few.

Trusted Brand

We believe that our focus on innovation (with the help of our active community) and the continued reliability of our service is important in building a trusted brand. Below is list of the key features that differentiate us.

• One-Click retweeting
• RSS + Email Buttons
• A range of plugins both by us and 3rd party developers.
• Integrated support for 11 Shortening services
• Scale supported by Sun Microsystems
• 24 hour support from our Team on Twitter on our dedicated support forum
• Enterprise Features for larger sites

Future

We know that publishers/blogs use our button to get further traction, but that is only one side of the coin. How do you know if your story was a success beyond just the retweet count? We have been working with partners to build a analytics package that is tailored for our users to understand how’s and why’s of the spread of a story. We will be starting a private beta next week (at same time as the Public release of the new version of TweetMeme), for now I have included a few sample screenshots.

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Many people have said that the comments left on blogs are often better than the blog post itself, so when we started looking at commenting on TweetMeme our primary goal was to allow good quality comments to be retweeted.

So today we are giving a sneak peek into one aspect of the new TweetMeme release which is coming early next week that fulfills that vision and a whole lot more.

Commenting

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We thought long and hard on how we could introduce comments to TweetMeme that would meet a number of goals including our retweet functionality.

1. Promotion of quality comments
2. Works seamlessly with Twitter
3. Reply mechanism that feels familiar to Twitter users
4. Ability to embed media into comments

Retweeting

I am sure everyone has found that discussions on blogs ‘can’ be absolutely compelling and that it is not unusual to find single comments that run to numbers of pages and would in themselves often warrant being their own blog post. These often go overlooked by a large proportion of readership that doesn’t have the time to read through all the comments on a single story.

Just like our normal story retweet functionality each Twitter user can only retweet a comment once (i.e. one vote per user). Within TweetMeme this means a simple one-click retweet which we send on your behalf behind the scenes, for users on Twitter they can retweet the unique link that points at that comment and we will count any further retweets towards the total. This gives an individual comment the same chance of spreading virally as any normal story.

Finally we make it possible to switch from the default ordered by date, to a ordered by ‘retweets’ so for a particular story see the most popular comments. On a story with hundreds of comments we think just like TweetMeme the ability to filter by the retweet popularity will be valuable in finding the quality comments.

Replying

We love the simplicity of Twitter and especially the ability to reply to multiple people. We wanted to duplicate this within TweetMeme but also make it quicker + simpler for new users. So all you have to do is click on the ‘reply’ button and the name of the person gets put in a ‘TO:’ box, click on another reply (on a different comment) and that name will also be added.

And just like Twitter you can click on ‘Replies’ (Twitter now calls it ‘mentions’) and you will only see the comments that have been directed back at you. On top of this when you post a comment on TweetMeme it also sends a Tweet to Twitter which includes the @[name] of each Twitter user, so even if they are not on TweetMeme at the time to see that you have replied, they will see it on back on Twitter (or any clients such as TweetDeck.)

Media Simplicity

We love short URL’s for their tracking and ability to be easily spread about the social web. For the average user they can also hide the final content and result in them not getting clicked. When we sat down and thought how we could encourage the embedding of media and the use of short URL’s the solution was simple, just use inherent ability of TweetMeme to un-shorten and aggregate the content at the end of the link.

You can see from the example above that the comment includes three links which have been annotated and reference the list of media below the content. When I wrote the comment I actually copy + pasted three short URL’s but TweetMeme went and un-shortened them. Then went and found the content associated with the links, e.g. title, body of the post and any media attached.

And Finally

This is only part of a major overhaul to TweetMeme that includes our 3rd generation of news filtering, new and much improved spam detection, improvements in search and a whole host of other smaller changes. We thank everyone who continues to support us and uses our Retweet Button. You can be sure we will continue to innovate in this space.

You know you are doing something right when people start copying you! It is said that copying is the sincerest form of flattery, so when I did my daily read of the tech blogs this morning I was of course interested to read on Techcrunch that retweet.com will soon be entering the fray and that it looked suspiciously like TweetMeme.

I had actually been contacted by their COO Tyson Quick in April to ask if we would support their plan to get twitter to support retweeting natively on Twitter. At the time I responded that I would think about it, in fact what I thought was that they were obviously trying to get us to help them promote a service that would at a later stage turn into a competitor, so I ignored it.

What caught my attention was that some industrious individual (@travisketchum) had left a comment on the TechCrunch article that he had been doing some digging around on the website and had found a link to their development environment. What we found ourselves was that our retweet button Javascript and the WordPress plugin code seemed to have been directly copied from ours.

We are happy for others to learn from our endeavors and flattered by the copying but some of our more complex JavaScript was obfuscated to deter others from attempting to re-use our code. We take a dim view of trying to pass off our code especially when it is attempting to create a competitor.

We our seeking further legal advice and will be pursuing every avenue to protect the hard work of our team.

It was decided today that we don’t tell you enough about what goes on behind the scenes at TweetMeme; in other words, what we do in the office when we aren’t busy keeping you updated with the latest Twitter news and making sure the site works well!

So, here is a quick rundown of the past couple of days…

The first thing to mention is that @nicktelford celebrated his birthday this week! He was brought some pink balloons and some lovely presents which all related to his favourite celebrity — Miley Cyrus. Needless to say he was ecstatic when he opened them! To make his day even better we then played his new Miley Cyrus CD… unfortunately that was short lived due to “noise” complaints from other companies in the building. Clearly they didn’t appreciate Miley as much as we did!

In other news… when I started working for TweetMeme almost 3 weeks ago I was a girl with a slight Facebook obsession. Unfortunately, working for a company which runs a Twitter app, this was not acceptable for certain members of the TweetMeme team (*cough* @dtsn and @chris_alexander). So 6 days ago they started the process of “converting” me over to Twitter. While I hate to admit it, they were successful, and I now have two programmes on my computer which will keep me updated with Twitter, as well as my Twitter homepage permenantly being open on my browser. This caused everyone at TweetMeme to use Twitter as the “water cooler”… rather than turning around to talk to one another, we now just converse via Twitter instead… (talking is so overrated!!)

Finally, the TweetMeme Nazbatag Bunny needs a special mention. She is currently taking a holiday to the other end of the office, so has been keeping me entertained and Chris annoyed for the past week… it has been very fun making her send Twitter updates of the wrong time! Today Chris did something very foolish and created a programme which allows us to send messages that Bunny will read out (something tells me he immediately regretted it!). If you want to see what Bunny is saying to all of us, feel free to follow her via Twitter.

I am releasing a couple of new channels today; the first one to be launched is the NASA channel. The channel is quickly filling with interesting content, and I am sure this will be a popular channel for people who are interested in space and science. Follow the NASA channel here!

The second new channel is the Facebook channel, which I am sure will be popular with fans of social media — I know this is a channel which I’m interested in, and I am sure others at Tweetmeme will be too given the discussions in the office the past week! If you want to find out more about what is happening in the social media world, then you will want to check this channel out! Click here to follow the Facebook channel!

Following the announcement of Microsoft Office 2010 a few weeks ago, I decided it was time to create a channel dedicated to it, as the river was flooding with the latest stories. This channel also contains the latest stories about Microsoft 7, I am sure this will be a popular channel amongst the computer techies out there! Click here to follow the latest stories on the Microsoft Office 2010 channel!

The final channel going live today is the Recession and Economy channel. As this is an issue which is going to be affecting everyone in the forseeable future, I expect this will be a popular channel. Follow the Recession and Economy channel to keep up-to-date with the latest stories!

Firstly I shall introduce myself; my name is Kate and I am responsible for Sales and Marketing here at TweetMeme. This is my first blog post so I hope you enjoy!

I have been working for TweetMeme for two months now and enjoying myself immensely. The digital space is a little bit of a challenge but I love being on board and learning lots.

Sarah (community manager) and I, headed to London for the Reboot Britain event – an event designed after the publication of the much talked about Digital Britain document. Held at Savoy place and nearing 300 delegates – it was an exciting event with many leaders and innovators in this area.

With as many as 8 lecture rooms, it meant that we had much choice – and you could plan a programme designed for your interests and what you wanted to learn about. There was an ongoing Twitter stream (#rebootbritain) that meant there was constant (and sometimes amusing) commentary, and some great speakers. Personal favourites of mine were Martha Lane- Fox, Jon Gisby, Charles Leadbeater and Alan Moore. But terribly upset I managed to miss Howard Rheingold…This was Sarah’s highlight of the day.

Uploaded by 'Rain Rabbit' on Flickr

Martha Lane Fox was talking about attempting to bridge the digital divide and the importance of this so that we do not create an underclass of those that do not have access to the online space. She was a really inspiring speaker and I will be interested in hearing about the future of this and how the Government attempts to tackle this issue.

Jon Gisby focused upon Channel 4s interactive space, how they are planning to achieve a successful campaign in the digital space, and how it is important for Britain to be influential and innovative to compete in the international web market. Much of this was focused around the importance for investment and funding for small, creative, (and British!) start-ups.

Charles Leadbeater spoke about the lesser importance of Traditional Media in a highly amusing talk. He spoke about how the traditional media space is changing. He talked about ‘Mutual Media’ and the need for companies and media sources to mutualise themselves by taking interactive and engaging ideas, and producing sources of this alongside social media strategies, and traditional media. Very insightful and it was nice to hear that TweetMeme is heading along the right track for helping brands and corporations to go in this direction.

One of the products here at TweetMeme is our ability to produce interactive and engaging ‘channels’ of content and verticals coming out of Twitter; A space where brands and media sources can engage with content, and those Twitter users that are talking about them. What was great from this event was realising how important this could be. Our channels can be custom made, skinned to look like particular websites, and to follow any #hashtags and keywords. One thing that did come up during the day was the need for tools and platforms to make this happen. This is something we can do!

It felt almost revolutionary being a part of the event and to witness the things being said. According to Alan Moore we are in a ‘Communication Evolution’ and that the new online media could be an ‘agent of political and social change.’ And that to ‘Reboot Britain’ we would need to replace a culture of blame with a culture of responsibility. The industry is moving so fast, and is such a learning curve for corporations – and people alike. Traditional organisations are suffering, especially in the current economic climate and they need to turn to other areas to reassess what will work for them. The problem for these traditional organisations is that they need coherent strategies, and that they are used to running with silos and with hierarchies without taking advantage of the new human potential of communication. Taking inspiration from start- ups are important for these corporations to help establish different ways of experimentation. The problem with this is that they cannot afford for something to not work.

Uploaded by 'RainRabbit' on Flickr

My colleague Sarah was reminded by Mike Earls of Herd of the 70, 20, 10 rule which seems ever more applicable in this new emerging industry. This rule refers to how agencies should spend their budget; 70% on what is known to work, 20% on innovation from what does work, and 10% on experimentation and trying new ideas. To remain innovative and competitive, agencies would have to do this. So if you want to try a new pioneering proposition, contact me! kate@tweetmeme.com or @TweetMemeSales.

Despite being an interesting day, it was not without its limitations; as anyone there will tell you. The internet was unreliable, and the audience was not as representative as one would have hoped. I think it would have made a real impact having some younger speakers and delegates there.

But what was great about Reboot was that it was a chance to explore new ideas together, new processes, and new strategies to make our society an open one. We should inspire to be able to engage with individuals/companies/public sector organisations in this way. If our different industry sectors are dysfunctional then we will not be able to produce technologies to take us forward, or implement them in a successful manner.

The results sticker competition of the sticker competition are in, and for such a short competition (less than 24 hours) we did get a lot of entries and some really great ideas, so thanks to those who spent time thinking these up and to those who obviously had nothing better to do at work that day (cough @amykate) we salute you all.

Results

We voted via a process of sticks, score cards, hand raising, Google docs spreadsheet (we are geeks remember!) each team member having between 1 and 5 points to assign to their top five favorite entries.

First Prize

Number: 404
Quote: Tweet Not Found
Submitted By: Sampicli (multiple people did submit this but Sampicli was first)

This was by far the clear winner, and being a very geeky reference I am sure will be very popular. For those non-geeks 404 refers to a missing webpage. The winner will receive 50 of the stickers.

Second Prize

Number: 69
Quote: Tweeting me, Tweeting you
Submitted By: holytshirt

Second place goes to the smutty minded, and if you don’t understand the reference I suggest you go ask mummy to explain the birds and the bees. The winner will receive 25 of the stickers.

Third Prize

Number: 1
Quote: to rule them all
Submitted By: Laura.2mdc

This is actually my personal favorite and I will be getting some t-shirts done up with this design as well. The reference refers to The Lord of the Rings and the One Ring that Sauran made for himself to have dominion over everyone else (very apt I thought). The winner will receive 10 of the stickers.

Honourable Mentions

There were so many others that got voted on but did not make it into the top 3 – so I have listed them below, if you want to see the full list of submissions check out the comments on the original blog post.

• 707 tweets – iz in ur button memeing ur tweet – by asmitter
• 2001 tweets – Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave? – by onemilliommonkeys
• 99999 tweets – And all I got was this tweetin’ t-shirt! – by mjwysocki1975
• 300 tweets – Tonight we tweet in hell – by onemilliommonkeys
• 747 tweets – Jumbo Tweet – by @markabaker
• 123 tweets – Easy as ABC – by benheymink

Thanks again to everyone who took part has been a lot of fun.

Earlier today we launched a Sticker Competition to help us come up with ideas for stickers that represent our Retweet Button (example on the right).

The Prizes

A quick reminder of the prizes on offer for the best ideas.

• First Prize – 50 stickers (with the relevant retweet count + text they suggested)
• Second Prize – 25 stickers
• Third Prize – 10 stickers

Poll

We have had some fantastic submissions already and I wanted to share some of the best (chosen by me) and allow you to vote on them, this is only for fun and the final decision will still be judged by the TweetMeme team.