The popular microblogging site Twitter, is redesigning its buttons to get a new look. Announced on Wednesday, September 24th, 2015, the buttons are having a new look for the first time since 2011.
In a post on its Developer Forums, Twitter announced the new look for its Tweets and Follow buttons. The design eliminated the subtle 3D effect, the blue Twitter bird and the black text, replacing it with a more modern 2D version with a white-over-blue look.
The design update comes at a time when many other tech companies are changing their looks, mainly in the aesthetic side, with a more vibrant color and flat 2D textures. Beyond the look of the new buttons, Twitter is quietly removing a feature that has been part of its share buttons for the last five years: Share counts.
For larger publishers who have partnered with Gnip, Twitter's data arm, nothing changes. Those companies that mostly are publishers, can publish their tweets and still having their share buttons and articles links in real-time. However, smaller publishers that are mostly individual websites and blogs will be affected.
For those services, they will need to create a new share count feature using Twitter's REST API, for example. Or by working with Gnip in order to get that full-archive search counts.
For the Follow buttons, Twitter is still displaying metrics as it did before.
Twitter's Niall Kennedy explained the updates in a blog post, saying that:
"Tweet buttons make authoring a Tweet from the context of a current webpage quick and easy. We are simplifying the Tweet button by removing the share counter displayed alongside the button. This new display removes the count and counturl display parameters, and will render in the same pixel dimensions as a Tweet button configured without a share count today.
New Things, New Twitter?
Twitter's buttons are much like Facebook's Like buttons. Or Google+ or any other major social media platforms. They represent something to the masses with just numbers, and they can be seen all over the web, mostly on pages where articles and news are published. With them, web visitors can easily share things they like with just a press of a button.
To most publishers on the web, these social buttons are crucial as they can say how popular a post is. The feature has been one of they key components that should be present on their pages, serving as a popularity rank.
It's common for web visitors to share things they link on the web to their social media accounts. And it's also common that before they read anything a publisher has to say, they look at how the post is performing on their favorite social media networks.
After the update, Twitter that is no longer showing the total of tweets associated with a page, for many publishers, this can certainly be a bad news.
Developers and publishers can work with Twitter's search API to gather information about the status of an URL shared on Twitter. However, only Twitter's Gnip that offers full-archive search count. And the in-house service comes with a pricey data division.
For most publishers, they have no choice at the time, other than possibly paying Twitter to continue having the share counts feature on their website/blog. In other cases, publishers will stop displaying tweet counts.
"The Tweet button has displayed share count over the last five years by querying a JSON endpoint hosted on various domains," wrote Kennedy. "These private JSON endpoints have been used by third-party developers over the years to retrieve a simple share count of any URL. These endpoints will be shut down next month when the Tweet button removes its share count feature."
Twitter has been changing its core social networking service in a whole lot of ways lately. Other recent changes, beside the ability to write long DM, include:
- Suggestions about who to follow in user timeline.
- Direct message desktop notifications.
- User profile previews
- Adding birthdays on profiles.
- The removal of custom profile page background wallpaper.
- Introducing product and place pages and collections.
What Twitter is aiming with all those changes is that the microblogging platform is seeking a bigger picture for its business. Twitter has been pushing a lot of new things to attract more users, while dealing with a change in leadership after Dick Costolo left the CEO title. These are also Twitter's way to show people, users and investors, that the company isn't at all stagnating like some people think.