3 Retweet Buttons for WordPress Blog Posts Compared
In today’s weekly Twitter Friday column I want to compare the 3 most common retweet buttons for WordPress blogs. A retweet button is a button that not only retweets the particular post it was clicked one but also displays how many people tweeted that link: On click these buttons also lead to a list of those who tweeted the link.
I have compared 5 categories:
- data retention – how long does the service store the tweet/retweets so that you can access them
- customization – in as far are you allowed t change the appearance of both button and the retweets
- URL shortener/s – which URL shortening service/s are used or supported
- issues – things that seemingly don’t work
- extra features – features the others don’t have or you wouldn’t expect
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| TweetMeme Retweet Button | BackType Tweetcount Widget | Topsy plugin for WordPress | |
| Data retention | several months | a few weeks | unlimited (forever) |
| Customization | 2 sizes, placement | 2 sizes, placement, text, colors, custom CSS | 2 sizes, placement, custom CSS |
| URL Shortener/r | bit.ly | bt.io, bit.ly, tinyurl etc. (you choose) | bit.ly |
| Issues | Does not support my blog address, doesn’t let you push the button twice | numbers sometimes seemingly random as tweets just stored a short time | Counts bt.io, su.pr etc. as extra URLs, thus inaccurate sometimes |
| Extra Features | Many platforms supported, comment tracking | comment tracking | Free statistics, retweets as trackbacks, groups influential users |
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There is one problem all the services face when they use bit.ly
Have you ever asked yourself what .ly stands for?
It’s Libya. Yes, that the dictatorship in North Africa. You trust dictatorships suing products Made in China as well? Well, think twice. The Lockerbie bombing has been committed by the Libyan secret service agent. So one day Libya might decide to block or reroute your URLs.
I’m not sure which one to choose myself yet. We use TweetMeme on SEOptimise and I test both BackTpe and Topsy on my SEO 2.0 blog currently. Thus I highlighted the most important pros IMHO.
There are several other less popular solutions. They offer less features but have other pros.
December 5th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Yes, any bit.ly connection is always concerning.
I wonder why WordPress’ default permalink structure hasn’t been utilised more? If you’ve a reasonably short domain name then yourdomain.com/?p=123 is not far off the length of of the shorteners. You can still use “pretty permalinks”, yet publish the ?p=123 version, and Google will index it (even through tweet out), and you’re assured it will survive as long as your domain does.
December 5th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
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December 9th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
[...] sure to check out this post from SEOptimise for a nice break down of the Retweet buttons mentioned in this [...]
December 18th, 2009 at 3:38 am
I am trying out the tweetmeme button and I can’t figure something out. On my blog the links send people to Tweetmeme and I want them to go directly to twitter. I see that you are using it on seoptimise so what am I doing wrong?