Further to the TweetMeme Blogger Gadget introduced last week, we are increasing our support for Blogger users with a new template editor.

We realise that the positioning of the Gadget in the Sidebar isn’t ideal, as many would prefer it inline with their posts, so to overcome this you can use our new tool to insert the button directly into your blog template. The editor is also good news for bloggers using “Classic” templates to whom gadgets aren’t available.

To get your template code for editing, simply go to Layout then Edit HTML in your dashboard, and copy your complete template from within the textarea ([Ctrl+A] then [Ctrl+C] works well). If you are using advanced templates, please ensure the Expand Widget Templates box is ticked, though our editor will tell you if you forgot!

Once you’ve found and copied your template code you can start using the TweetMeme Blogger Template Editor.

With the addition of the editor, we’ve decided to bundle Blogger support in to a new Blogger menu page from which you can find the Gadget, the Template Editor, and a guide for manual editing.

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.

Today we launched an update to our TweetMeme Widget. We have a number of new features that are integrated into the new widget. These include the ability to filter content in the widget by category, channel and domain.  This is giving you the user far more control over the information that you show in your widget.

For those of you who have had or are currently considering purchasing one of our custom channels this means that you can now use the widget in your own site to show the content of your own channel.

Also for those of you who have larger websites along the lines of Mashable and Techcrunch, you should find that you can track the top stories on your own domain through the widget too (this is a very new feature and as such please treat it as a beta feature). See the example widget below for the Formula 1 custom channel.  Also take a look at the widget page and see how much more useful it is now than it was.

If you have feedback or suggestions on the widget then please pop here and let us know what you think.

Interested in having a custom channel built for your brand or company then get in touch and we’ll be happy to discuss this further with you.

Prior to today we had a restriction on the TweetMeme Button that all tweets were re-tweeted as RT @tweetmeme with the exception of those on the whitelist where they could do RT @their_twitter_account which allowed the re-tweet to be from a specific twitter account/ user.  We got lots of feedback from our users… especially those who weren’t on the whitelist via our Forums and listened to their shouts!  I bet they thought we were ignoring them! (but no, we were working away to ensure that the updates worked perfectly.)

So now everyone is whitelisted and you can change it to RT @[your twitter name]. We have updated the instructions on the Button page and we have also updated the WordPress Plugin so that you change the twitter account easily. Once you have the plugin installed, go to Settings, TweetMeme and then set the Source to your twitter name. (e.g. talktweetmeme in my case) Don’t include the @ otherwise it’ll be @@talktweetmeme which wouldn’t really work.

We hope you like the update and the power it gives you as a user to see who is re-tweeting your stories and articles.  It should also mean that you could create conversation around the stories online if you add those re-tweeting your stories as friends on twitter.  I’m sure people will come up with all sorts of useful ways of using this new and very much requested feature!

Please do give us feedback and new feature requests on our Forum.  We do read every request and we try to do those that are of value to many people as soon as we can!

Recently we have had a great uptake with our official TweetMeme Button being used on some widely read websites.  As a result we’ve seen our traffic and number of re-tweets increase. So we thought that we would share with you who the top re-tweeters are on our site this month.

The list consists of:

• @chrispirillo
• @mashable
• @zdnetblogs
• @phillyd
• @huddle
• @thenextweb
• @laughingsquid
• @rww

A big thank you to our top re-tweeters and those using our re-tweet button.  If you have a high volume blog site on WordPress and are using our plugin then do let us know.  We like to say thank you to our top re-tweeters!

So today is my first day as the community manager at TweetMeme and as such I thought it would be a good opportunity to introduce myself and what I’ll be doing here over the next few months.  So here goes…

First things first I’ll be looking over the comments from our current users and identifying any key areas where the site could be drastically improved so get your suggestions into us via the forum as I’ll be looking there to see what areas are your pain points and what features we are missing that should really be there.  I’m also into making things as simple and usable as possible so if I see usability issues I’ll be picking up on them to make your job easier!

Secondly I’ll be attending The Next Web conference and will have my laptop with me so that you can see TweetMeme in action and at it’s best.   As such do come and find me and I’ll show you what we can do with the site!  Honestly there’s more to it than just the front page… I wonder how many of you are using the tweetmeme wordpress plugin on your sites or the buttons.  Also if you’re a developer and are interested in working with our API then do take a look at it, we are looking for feedback on this as it’s something we are hoping for developers to get really into!

And finally some random facts about me…

Background: Formerly I worked at Cardinal Health as a software engineer doing a  lot of .net programming and software development in and around this area.  I’m also the founder of the Girl Geek Dinners and that is where my community experience comes from.  I’m known for being a little unconventional in my approach to things and have a passion for mobile devices… so thanks to Nick (aka the Boss) I am now fully connected with an IPhone!  So that means you can find me on Twitter a little more often than you used to!  If you want to find me on twitter my account is @girlygeekdom and I have a couple of blogs… my group blog is GirlyGeekdom and my personal one which I’ve not put much on recently is Flirting with the Future… I thought it was a fun name for a blog!  You’ll also find me blogging here and over on the Fav.or.it blog too! And yes I will be cross posting every now and again, but hopefully not too often!

With the release of the tweetmeme API on March the 4th (blog post) we have decided to utilise our own API and build a nice widget. This widget can display the most popular or recent tweets in any of 4 categories.

The Editor

Even if you have no knowledge of programming we give you a really simple interface to create your own widget. You can easily change the colours, the width and the data which the widget fetches. The we give you a nice bit of JavaScript to integrate into your site.

Advanced Options

The widget is built on top of the tweetmeme API, so it is possible to completely customise the widget to your own use. Let us know in the comments where and how you decided to use the widget.