Twitter is removing share counts buttons - How would you be affected?

You may have missed the big news but back at the end of September Twitter announced a controversial alteration about the new design for tweet and follow button.  These changes will be launched this coming Friday 20th November.

So, what would be the likely impact?

A very simplistic explanation of the change would be that after Friday, it will not be easy to see the number of times an article has been shared on Twitter. Of course, the actual consequences would vary according to the extent you operate online.

Warfare Plugins gives some examples of possible areas likely to be affected:

• If you’re a blogger, your Tweet button won’t show visitors how many times your latest post (or any post) has been shared
• If you’re an online pro who gets paid for helping to promote brands, you’ll lose a primary way of showing advertisers how popular you are with the online masses
• If you’re a third-party app developer, you may be in deep waters – without access to Tweet share counts, your app may lose a critical part of its functionality, and you may lose subscribers.

However, Twitter official PR on the subject states that:

“The Tweet button count does not reflect the impact on Twitter of conversation about your content - it doesn’t count replies, quote Tweets, variants of your URLs, nor does it reflects the fact that some people tweeting these URLs might have many more followers than others”. Twitter also adds that: “The count was built in a time where the only button on the web was from Twitter. Today, it’s most commonly placed among a number of other share buttons, few of which have counts.”

We believe that although the actual Twitter count is not perfect, it is still an indication of social proof and value and as such it is a free good tool to measure your social activity.

Fortunately, people at BuzzSumo have already developed a Chrome plugin that people can install which will show the share data, including the number of Twitter sharers, for any web page.  This is the link to download the BuzzSumo plugin.

For further advice on Social Media tools, call us on 01242 200308 or use the Contact us link below.