In response to feedback from some of our larger publishers, we are proud to announce the launch of TweetMeme Pro.

TweetMeme continually looks to improve its service and develop new ways for our publishers to integrate seamlessly. The company has grown substantially over the past year and now serves in the region of 700M buttons per day on around 250,000 sites.

We understand that it is important to provide the option of delivering a branded experience for its users through improved delivery and the ability to customise the button.

The TweetMeme Pro Button provides support for:

• Up to 10 UTM tracking codes within the button
• Customisation on the design of the button
• Customisation on the design of the pop-up box
• Dedicated servers to ensure high reliability and performance
• The best user + publisher Retweet experience*
• 100% accurate Retweet counts*
• URL Shortener Support (including BIT.LY Pro)*
• Web, RSS, Email and Mobile support*
• Support for HashTags + Whitespace*
• International language support*

The TweetMeme Pro solution means you will be able to track the performance of tweets made through the button, and deliver a fully branded experience to your users.

Existing sites already using the TweetMeme Pro solution include:

As of today we are already serving 80 million Pro buttons daily using a combination of co-location and dedicated servers. TweetMeme’s hosting partner, DediPower, not only supports the 700 million standard retweet buttons that we serve each day, but also provides the high capacity, on-demand infrastructure required to cope with our growing Pro and standard button-base.

To find out how you can use TweetMeme Pro please take a look at our website or sign-up.

* – Features also included in the standard TweetMeme Retweet Button.

Today we’re releasing a major upgrade to our platform that will significantly impact parts of our API. These changes are necessary to allow our platform to scale at the tremendous rate we’re seeing and provide vastly improved reliability.

/stories/tweets

The /stories/tweets API call now includes a “uuid” (a 32 char hex string) for each Tweet returned. This UUID represents the Tweets position within the timeline for that story. The from_id parameter, which used to accept the Tweet ID of the previous Tweet to page from now accepts the UUID of the previous Tweet to page from.  If you pass the Tweet ID instead, you will get an error.

This is the most disruptive change and only affects clients that page tweets. Your underlying paging logic can remain the same, but you will need to pass our API a different value for the from_id.

/stories/recent & /stories/popular

Both the /stories/recent and /stories/popular API calls will no longer accept a domain parameter. This is due to a performance issue that we have identified and we hope to restore this functionality in the coming months.

The Stories API docs have been updated with these changes, please refer to them for more details and examples.

Since the initial creation of the TweetMeme button we’ve been looking for interesting, useful & innovative ways to update it and to make it easier for you all to update your Twitter accounts with the most interesting content that you find on the internet and to share your own content with your followers. As such we’ve extended and slightly altered the way that the TweetMeme button now works.

Before I go on and show you how this will work and what it will look like please note that this functionality has not yet been put live and a such the images shown below may look slightly different to the final version but with no significant changes to the basic functionality.

We will have two different variants of our button. One for on our TweetMeme website, which we call our internal button. And one for on external websites. I explain this first because I don’t want anyone getting confused that they act very slightly differently.

The TweetMeme Button on the TweetMeme site

The image above is what you will see when you try to connect to TweetMeme for the first time. It is basically setting you up to connect us to TweetMeme using Twitter’s Oauth access. It will take you to Twitter and ask you to log in just like in the image below. It’s a bit like Facebook connect really but for Twitter.

Once you’ve done this you’ll then be able to re-tweet any content from our site by pressing the green part of our TweetMeme button without having to log into TweetMeme if you are already logged into Twitter. Instead you’ll just get an image like the one below! Note that you can now edit the content of the message to whatever you choose. What you cannot do is remove or replace the URL with a different one. This is to ensure that the content sent does really relate back to the original source. After all we wouldn’t want it to misguide people.

Now for on your own site!

External TweetMeme Buttons!

To ensure consistency and simplicity we use a very similar system to the internal one. So for the first time you log into the TweetMeme button you will see the following:

Once again it connects with Twitter just like Facebook connect for the first time. If you aren’t logged into Twitter you’ll be asked to log in as usual and then get passed back to the button. Where you can edit the content (excluding the URL) and read even more interesting content on the site. We don’t take you away from the site that you are reading to update your users.

If at any point you don’t like or want this functionality you can always log into TweetMeme and change your preferences so that all buttons act as they currently do with no content editing for your account and automatic retweeting of content when you press then button and are logged in. If for any reason you say no the the initial connection on an external site we will automatically revert back to the original log in and allow manual tweeting & editing of your tweet on your own Twitter account on Twitter.

We hope you enjoy the new functionality and if you are press and would like to find out more about the button or require additional information please don’t hesitate to get in contact.

10:32:40 AM: Today we will be doing a maintenance update of our TweetMeme site #TweetMemeV2 as we know you like to know what’s going on we’re tweeting it

10:36:55 AM: Looks like we’re all set to get started!

10:39:08 AM: TweetMeme is now down and the buttons will be up for now still.

10:39:44 AM: And the buttons that are new will show the Maintenance button #TweetMemeV2

10:40:01 AM: System back up done! #TweetMemeV2

10:44:27 AM: Now for the big stuff! #TweetMemeV2

10:51:46 AM: Why is it that the post arrives mid upgrade and live tweet! It seems to all be going very smoothly so far… Fingers Crossed #TweetMemeV2
10:55:52 AM: Now for the code updates… they look like they are upgrading OK atm… The dev team are checking they are all there! #TweetMemeV2

11:01:59 AM: So what does everyone think of the new logo ? You’ll see we’ve updated it over on the TweetMeme twitter account http://retwt.me/pN
11:04:31 AM: TweetMeme will be back soon! http://bit.ly/ClXQy
via @tweetmeme

11:04:43 AM: TweetMeme Maintenance Live Update http://bit.ly/wnNjX
via @tweetmeme

11:07:17 AM: Do we want more pics of the team working hard? #TweetMemeV2

11:12:42 AM: So you’ve already seen Alex doing his thing… Now for Nick T our in house Mylie Cyrus fan… #TweetMemeV2 http://twitpic.com/fjwqd

11:16:04 AM: I have a feeling @nicktelford is probably going to hide now he’s been outed! http://is.gd/2DJ99

11:19:53 AM: If you’re wondering what’s going on we’re still upgrading. It does take a while to do though! The team have been working hard! #TweetMemeV2

11:24:12 AM: You should hear the silence in the office as everyone is beavering away! Just the tap tapping of keyboards! #TweetmemeV2

11:39:37 AM: Checking our spam filter settings & a few other bits now…#TweetmemeV2

11:50:40 AM: We’re now testing everything to make sure it’s all working properly!

12:01:44 PM: We can hear the dull tones of #readingfestival from our offices! I’m amazed we can hear it as it’s a few miles away! #TweetMemeV2

12:08:03 PM: Team motivation to get the site back up online #TweetMemeV2 http://twitpic.com/fjzzn

12:11:04 PM: RT @alexforrow: @talkTweetMeme http://twitpic.com/fjv3c – Yeah makes me look like some kind of milk addict <- he’s our milk fiend!

12:11:53 PM: RT @stewarttownsend: http://bit.ly/u9SNK The Story of Tweetmeme #tweetmemev2

12:33:54 PM: We have content in our test area! And are looking to go live very, very soon!

12:50:15 PM: The first thing to go online will be our API. THe rest will follow.

1:27:05 PM: The buttons should be starting to come back up and the API should be working but is currently rate limited.

5:49:09 PM: Not quite as simple an update as we hoped but buttons are being served & the API is running. The site update is a bit tricker but is coming

7:39:42 PM: And finally the main site is about to go live! Wait for it! …..

7:42:11 PM: We’ll be doing a count down!

7:42:35 PM: 3, 2, 1, go!

7:45:59 PM: http://tweetmeme.com

7:47:37 PM: Thanks to all the TweetMeme team for all their hard work today! I know it’s been a long hard few weeks getting it all finished!
7:54:41 PM: We hope everyone likes it and do let us know about any site bugs over on the forum http://help.tweetmeme.com/forum

TweetMeme is currently unavailable as we are performing a system upgrade.

This will have an impact on the service we provide, so please read this post carefully before you post any support requests at this time.  Please read on to find out how this will impact you.

User Impact

First of all, all webpages at TweetMeme.com will display a holding page until the upgrade is complete.  The API will also also be down, but will still return a failure message in the requested format. Buttons displayed on websites will exhibit one of a number of behaviours, so please examine these carefully before you ask for support for a broken button.
Button Behaviours

If your URL was known to TweetMeme before the upgrades began, we will still attempt to serve the last known Retweet count on your button. When users click on the Retweet part, they will be directed to Twitter where they can post the Tweet about the story. However, during the period of downtime, button counts *will not* increment as you would usually expect. When we come back online we will try our best to retrieve as many Tweets that were posted while we were offline as possible, however we will miss some of them (we estimate about 10 minutes worth). The button counts will start changing again as we come back online after the upgrades are complete.

If your URL was not know to TweetMeme before the upgrades started, you will see a special TweetMeme button with a spanner icon instead of the usual count. This is expected behaviour and will be displayed until the upgrade is complete and TweetMeme picks up your URL, when it will start displaying Retweet counts as usual.

There may also be some buttons displaying question marks, these will be picked up by TweetMeme and will begin displaying as expected when the upgrades are complete.

We’d like to thank everyone for their patience and understanding while these necessary upgrades are performed, and we hope you enjoy the improved functionality and response speed of the TweetMeme site and button in the future.

To follow our progress we will live tweet updates here: http://blog.tweetmeme.com and status updates for our services will be on http://status.tweetmeme.com