tweetmeme

Interview with ReTweet.com

Differences, controversies (ReTweet.com v/s TweetMeme.com) apart, today we have Mesiab Labs Chief Operations Officer Tyson Quick. We thank Tyson for taking time for this interview.

For those who don’t know about ReTweet.com: As you might have already guessed by its name, it is a new service that shows popular links being shared(tweeted) and re-shared (retweeted) mainly across Twitter.

They surly have got a killer domain name ReTweet.com and a super URL shortner rt.nu.

Here is the interview:

1. Please tell our readers about yourself and ReTweet.com service.

Retweet is the official place to find real-time news on popular stories, images, and videos. We provide this service by scanning thousands of updates on the worlds most popular micro-blogging service, Twitter.com and with the help of users like you whom have added our retweet button to your blog. The word retweet has now become one of the most popular terms online and describes the action of repeating or sharing someones original tweet / story. We now live in a world where for the first time in history real-time news is possible thanks to modern web technologies and crowd sourced content creation, retweet is here to leverage this modern way of announcing and discovering news. We pride ourselves in providing “news for the people, by the people”.. meaning we do not decide what news finds it’s way to the home page of our site.

Retweet is still a baby ( thus the BETA ), expect to see many improvements over the next few months as we have great things in store. In the mean time, help us improve the service by adding our button to your blog.

2. Some history behind the service ReTweet.com

Retweet.com is a side-project, as our software products are priority. We purchased the Retweet.com domain name 4 months ago for a substantial amount of money knowing exactly what we were going to do with it. At this time tweetmeme ( our main competitor in this arena only had around 200k monthly visitors ).

3. What inspired for the creation of a service around Twitter.

I ( Tyson Quick – COO ) thought up the idea around the same time the plane crash happened in the Hudson river and it was first reported via TwitPic… real-time “crowd-sourced” news was being born. I was also a fan of DIGG.com at the time and saw how twitter could essentially be used the same exact way. Believe it or not, our team had this idea before we ever saw tweetmeme.. although they were obviously the first ones to jump on the bandwagon.

4. What are the long term business plan and business model for ReTweet.com?

I cannot expose our business plans for retweet.com at this time, although we do have a well planned business model ( note: this does not rely on us ever passing tweetmeme in traffic ) – Although this is one of our long-term goals.

5. What new features can we expect from ReTweet.com in coming days?

We will first be matching our competitors features 100% and then adding additional features we thought up ourselves. I also cannot release these details at this time. But, i’ll assure you our users will like them.

6. How big or small is ReTweet.com, as a company?

Retweet.com is run by Mesiab Labs: Mesiab Labs is an LLC established and registered in Boise, Idaho. The company was initially funded by the now dissolved software company Easy Ad, owned and operated by Kevin Mesiab. The executive team consists of Kevin Mesiab ( CEO ), Tyson Quick ( COO ), and Sean Boone ( Director of Design ). Mesiab Labs builds market leading software and web based applications in various markets. We have a total of 4 people on Staff. All our projects are self-funded, we have never accepted VC or outside funding.

7. How important do you think the numbers game in Twitter (I am talking about the follower count)? Do you think it matters?

If you are a Business, then numbers are extremely important. When it comes to marketing, businesses rely on how many potential customers they can reach.

8. What do you have to say about Twitter banning @retweet account.

We believe Twitter Banned our @retweet account because they are trying to trademark the term ( we have a pending trademark as well ) and because of their up-coming launch of their internal retweet function. From Twitter’s standpoint they might be worried about a 3rd party owning an account on their platform that is associated with the 2nd largest twitter term ( 2nd only to tweet )

9. What are your thoughts about Twitter getting the copyrights on Tweet and ReTweet?

Well the term tweet has already been denied and we believe the same will occur with the term retweet. We are confident that we will be granted it if anybody gets the trademark because of the related domain name and the fact that the domain has been registered for over two years before we purchased the rights to it.

10. How do you think, you stand out from your competitors?

Right now we have not added many features that differ from our competitors, we first have to play the catch-up game. We have many features planned that have yet to be implemented. Right now the main thing that stands out about our company is our brand power and our extensive experience in online marketing. We also own our own url shortner rt.nu that is being implemented with retweet, as well as checkretweet.com

11. If you want to tell something else to our readers, you can tell

Retweet.com will remain an extremely social site, holding monthly competitions, etc.

Its left to you which service you use on your blog, but its always good for bloggers to know the alternatives and its pros and cons. Take the interview positively, and we love to see a positive competition between ReTweet.com and TweetMeme.com, Wishing them best of luck. Hope you enjoyed the interview.

An Interesting Interview with TweetMeme

This is one of the interesting interviews we have on our blog.
Sarah Blow, from TweetMeme.com was kind enough to answer our questions. And importantly, answered so accurately. Its interesting to see a business built around Twitter.

TweetMeme is a service which aggregates all the popular links on twitter to determine which links are popular. TweetMeme is able to categorize these links into categories and subcategories, making it easy to filter out the noise to find what you are interested in.

TweetMeme was built by a small web company called fav.or.it who are passionate about twitter, social media and a whole lot more. You can read about what the team are up to on their blog

A glimpse at TweetMeme office space!
All the photographs of TweetMeme looks interesting, we have chosen one for this interview. You can look at the rest @ flickr.

Here is the interview:

Please tell our readers about yourself and TweetMeme service.

TweetMeme is a service that aggregates the most re-tweeted stories on twitter and makes them accessible to people in one central location. The service also includes it’s re-tweet button which helps users quickly engage their readers in re-tweeting interesting and relevant content to their twitter followers. Other offerings around TweetMeme include the Widget and API.

Some history about TweetMeme and fav.or.it(Parent company of TweetMeme!).

TweetMeme started out around 8 months ago as an extension of the original service Fav.or.it but specifically created with a focus on the content from Twitter rather than the web at large. The company is owned by Nick Halstead who is passionate about technology and entrepreneurship. Fav.or.it was founded about a year before TweetMeme and TweetMeme is a brand owned by Fav.or.it Ltd.

What inspired for the creation of tweetmeme.

TweetMeme was a natural progression of the original Fav.or.it concept of centralizing and aggregating interesting and most importantly relevant content from the web. The focus on Twitter came about as Twitter became more main stream showing that it may yet become a tool for the masses.

Many people around the world, all over the blogs are talking about “Is Twitter a Good Marketing Tool or yet another Time Waster” ? Tweetmeme being in the business, I can guess your answer, but would like to know it from you. And please tell us the reason for your answer.

You ask an interesting question here on Marketing. I would say Twitter is a tool that you MUST understand before using it for Marketing purposes. If used correctly such as for the Twestival campaign which raised hundreds of thousands of pounds around the world for the charity Clean Water then yes it is an excellent marketing tool. However if companies just use it as an extended RSS feed and don’t actively engage their brand in conversation and support then it’s no where near as useful as it could be. We try to help companies understand this when they come to us asking about using our featured tweet offerings or asking for a custom channel to be created for them. We think it is incredibly important for companies to understand both the risks and the rewards that can come from using social media tools such as twitter for marketing their brand but also for public relations.

What are the long term business plan and business model for TweetMeme?

Now that would be telling wouldn’t it…. We are already making money through our advertising revenue, featured tweets and custom channels but look out for other interesting things in the coming months. I’m going to leave that question there and leave you all guessing to find out what comes next for us.

How addicted are you and other employees at TweetMeme, to Twitter?

Addicted… that’s a strong word… that would suggest that we can’t keep away from the tool. We use it a lot but not to the detriment to our health or happiness. We understand that there is a healthy balance to be had between online and offline communications. I think you would class all the employees at TweetMeme as Twitter enthusiasts!

Do you think Twitter is becoming more of a main stream media now a days or do you think it will be a main stream media soon.

I think Twitter is fast becoming a common communication channel much like SMS however it will still take some time for the majority of the general public to find a suitable way of it working for them. Mainstream Media here in the UK already use it on local and national radio stations, within some TV programs for feedback and major celebrities both in the UK and the US are using it to engage their fans. As an engagement tool it is powerful but I’d love to see it used on programs such as Top Gear and National News Programs. So all in all I’d say it’s coming but it will take time.

Do you think, the presence of a company on Twitter, will positively help in their business or is just a distraction.

I think it depends on how the company has a presence on twitter and what the purpose of it’s presence is. If it is individuals on Twitter just to communicate on a personal level then that is very different to say a large medical company interacting with other businesses or key business influencers within their industry sector. Twitter has the power to connect people that would otherwise never manage to communicate with one another without intervention.

We can see TweetMeme buttons on many websites now a days. It makes me curious to know, how much bandwidth does it consume each day or each month? And what server configurations do you use to manage them?

We serve over 46,000,000 buttons per day but this isn’t the only thing that we do and as such our bandwidth usage isn’t something that is easy to split down to specific usage functions. We use Sun Micro-systems servers and are supported through the Sun Startup Essentials program. It’s a great program that we would encourage other startups to consider.

What new features can we expect from TweetMeme in coming days?

You’ll have to wait and see… that’s part of the fun of following us on twitter @talktweetmeme or following our blog http://blog.tweetmeme.com we announce all our latest releases of information over there, so you’ll just have to wait and see.

How big or small is TweetMeme, as a company?

I guess size is very much dependent on how you measure it. As far as number of employees, we’re a small team of 9 people but as far as our reach and traction, then I guess you would say we are pretty large.

What do you feel about Twitter. What might be its future?

Unfortunately I don’t have a crystal ball but Twitter’s future is bright and I look forward to seeing where it leads in the future.

How important do you think the numbers game in Twitter(I am talking about the follower count)? Do you think it matters?

Does the follower count really count…. now there’s a question that thousands have tried to answer. I think the most important thing with follower counts is that you follow people that you find interesting and people who find you interesting follow back. I don’t believe that any good can be had from following the whole of the twitter population and at some point you reach a personal maximum where the number of people you follow is so large that the stream of information is just too vast and varied that you miss interesting conversations and as such will end up following less to keep useful information flowing. As far as finding followers goes, be interesting, engaging and of value. If you are those three things you’ll get followers. You don’t need to be the most followed person in the world to have a large influence just a good strong network with links to other key influencers if you want to get a message spread far and wide.

Best practices at Twitter.

I’m assuming you mean when using twitter with this question:
Be honest, block spammers, don’t feed the trolls (those people deliberately out for an argument), be careful about telling people your location when you’re out and about, think about personal online safety (don’t publish your address details, bank details etc!), be reasonable, engage, inspire and enjoy!

Worst practices at Twitter.

Advertising, spamming, explicit images, rss to twitter only, excessive tweeting, uninteresting or irrelevant content,

Finally, how ofter do you re-tweet, at least when you see the TweetMeme button on a blog/website, which is interesting?

I re-tweet anything I think is useful to my readers when I see it, be that through the tweetmeme button or copy and paste. I don’t re-tweet excessively url’s as my users like conversation as well as links. Links without conversation are largely irrelevant. It’s all about meaningful, relevant and reliable conversation!

Thanks to Sarah Blow,
Community Manager
TweetMeme.com. For being so generous to agree for an interview with us. You can follow TweetMeme with these links:
http://tweetmeme.com
http://blog.tweetmeme.com
http://twitter.com/talktweetmeme
http://twitter.com/girlygeekdom

Thanks for reading. And I hope you can see a TweetMeme button below this article. Use the button to share about this interview with your friends, if you find it interesting.

TweetMeMe or Tweet Me Not!

First thing first: “TweetMeme is a service that aggregates the most re-tweeted stories on twitter and makes them accessible to people in one central location. The service also includes it’s re-tweet button which helps users quickly engage their readers in re-tweeting interesting and relevant content to their twitter followers. Other offerings around TweetMeme include the Widget and API.” – Sarah, Community Manager, TweetMeme.com.

You probably have see TweetMeme buttons used by many bloggers and even mainstream media websites. It helps in reaching more audience.

There are two options to use the TweetMeme button:
1. On selective posts.
2. On every posts published on the blog.

If you want to insert TweetMeme button to a particular post, then here is the code:
Put this code wherever you want the TweetMeme button to appear:


<script type="text/javascript">
tweetmeme_style = 'compact';
tweetmeme_url = 'http://yoururl.com';  
 tweetmeme_source = 'yourTwitterID';  
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js">
</script>

I personally like the compact TweetMeme icon, which shows the number of re-tweets and gives the option to re-tweet. But the large one my help get user attention. To get the compact button, I have used tweetmeme_style = 'compact'; and note that all these

tweetmeme_style = 'compact';
tweetmeme_url = 'http://yoururl.com';  
 tweetmeme_source = 'yourTwitterID';

fields are optional, if not used, default values will be taken. Its a walk in the breeze experience, to install things on a blog/website using WordPress, but not so in many other blogging platforms. So, you can make use of the above code to implement it manually on your blog.
Code Source: TweetMeme Help

You can also know the number of re-tweets a story has got, using this code:


http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=<url>

replace the <url> with the URL of the article.

If you want to show TweetMeme re-tweet button at the end/ beginning of every article on your blog, then its a good idea to make use of tweetmeme plugin.

Another fantastic plugin that I personally like is: Tweetable.
Here is its features:
* Automatically tweet your blog posts when they are published. Optionally add Google Analytics campaign tags to the shortened URLs. You also have your pick of URL shorteners.
* Tweet from within WordPress. The plugin adds a dedicated Twitter page where you can browse your friends timeline and post updates. An optional quick-tweet Dashboard widget is available as well.
* Display your latest tweets in your blog sidebar with a customizable widget. Includes support to display follower count.
* Set the minimum user level to access the Twitter page in the WordPress backend.
* Automatically add a full-size or compact Tweetmeme widget to your posts.
* Track tweets based on keywords of your choice via the Twitter API.

Over all, I think it’s good to use this button at the end of the article, as it will be a good call for action. As per my observation, a story with TweetMeme button get more re-tweets. People can see how many people have already tweeted about the particular article, and it can arise their feeling, to re-tweet.
It is also interesting to see TweetMeme using bit.ly as the default URL shortener. So we can get those extra stats- the number of clicks we got to the re-tweeted article link and the location of the people, who clicked the link etc. You need not even have an account with bit.ly, just append a + sign at the end of the shortned URL and hit the enter key.
Ex:- One of my article URL, shortened using bit.ly is http://bit.ly/mOtWR To see the stats I just need to append a + sign i.e., http://bit.ly/mOtWR+ and hit the enter. So simple.

How often have you tweeted a story that has a re-tweet button and how often have you tweeted about a story that does not have one. Always remember, many people using internet are lazy enough, so you can’t expect many people to phrase the tweet. Only a small percentage of people will take the initiative to form the original tweets, to share the stories that they like and all others re-tweet it. So it would be a good idea to have such links where people can just tweet or re-tweet about it, with 1 or 2 clicks.

Have you used TweetMeme buttons on your website/blog. How is it performing? Do you have it at the bottom or top of the article? Do you prefer using a plugin or manual coding for individual posts.