You will now find a TweetMeme API functionality integrated in the TwitterLand Library  over on GemCutter that will provide Ruby developers with a simple access layer which integrates with our API.  The library has been written in Ruby and supports the following data retrieval:

• Retrieving the number of retweets for a specific URL
• Support for URL-specific tweets in the last 7 days (tweets linking to the specified URL)
• Retrieving URL-specific comments
• Retrieving the comments firehose (recent comments on TweetMeme)

If you would like to use this library you will find additional information and documentation on the TwitterLand Library here.

Our thanks go to Wynn Netherland for creating this open source library.

The TweetMeme retweet button is for website and blog publishers who want to encourage their audience to tweet their content on Twitter. The button shows a live count of the number of times your webpage or blog post has been tweeted. You may have already seen buttons like this one appearing on this and other blogs all over the ‘net:

« Here’s a working example. Give it a try…

Now, you can have it on your Squidoo lens too. Best of all, you don’t even need an account on Twitter, but you can help your visitors spread the word about your lens for you. This looks great in either the Guestbook module, or the Lens Love widget, or anywhere else you like.

And here’s the code you need (edit as required):

<a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=URL of lens&source=username" target="_blank" title="retweet"><img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=URL of lens" alt="retweet" width="51" height="61" align="left" /></a>

Notes:

• You must put in complete URL of your lens, for example: http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo. Don’t forget to put in both places, once for the link and again for the image.
• If you have a twitter account, then put your username after &source=, so that you get credit when others do a retweet. Otherwise, leave it blank.
• The code above will display the button on the left, with any following content wrapping around it. You can change it to be align=”right” if you prefer, or remove the alignment altogether.
• If you get a big question mark after adding it to your lens, you should double-check your code. Make sure there aren’t any spaces or blank lines were there shouldn’t be.
• Login to TweetMeme.com with your Twitter account, and see stats for all of your the lenses that have been tweeted.
• Don’t feel you have to add this to every single lens you own – start with just the few that get decent traffic and a semi-technical audience.

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This post was brought to you by thefluffanutta over at SquidUtils Blog

Adding the TweetMeme button to your blog is easy with our Blogger Gadget, just follow these simple steps:

1. Login to Blogger and navigate to your control panel (click “customise” on your Blogger bar)



2. On the Layout tab, choose Page Elements
3. In the sidebar, click Add a gadget; this will open a new window



4. The easiest way from here is to search for “tweetmeme” using the search box in the top right, click on either the title or thumbnail of the resulting match, then skip to step 8



5. Alternatively you can install using our gadget installation file:

http://tweetmeme.s3.amazonaws.com/misc/blogger_gadget.xml

6. Choose Add your own from the new window’s menu
7. Delete the text http:// from the box then paste in the location of our gadget installation file from step 5 and click Add by URL



8. The page will change to a form which you can use to customse the button and how it retweets, however no changes are necessary you can leave all the defaults



9. Press the Save button and you will return to Page Elements within your control panel with TweetMeme Retweet listed in the sidebar



10. You may now wish to re-position the TweetMeme Retweet gadget by dragging it within the Page Elements editor; we suggest at the top of your sidebar for best visibility
11. You can now return to your blog to see the retweet button installed

Congratulations, your readers can now easily retweet from your blog!

The Analytics API allows external developers access to TweetMeme’s Analytics service for integration into your own solutions.

Implementation

The Analytics API is the most complex part of the TweetMeme API. It requires you to store some data on your system in order for everything to work correctly. Some API calls have restricted access, which is granted on a case-by-case basis. To request permission to the restricted APIs, contact analytics@tweetmeme.com.

Authentication

All Analytics API calls require authentication. The parameters are listed below:

• appid: int your TweetMeme Application ID
• apikey: string your TweetMeme API Key

Both of these values are available from My TweetMeme Profile (you will need an active TweetMeme Analytics account in order to obtain your API credentials)

UIDs

In response to a request to build Analytics for a particular URL, the API will return a UID for the Analytics build. In order to retrieve the Analytics you have requested to be built, you must provide the same appid, apikey and this UID to the system in order to retrieve them again. Therefore your system must be capable of storing this UID for reference later.

The building process can take up to 30 minutes at peak times. Therefore, your system must be capable of polling the API to retrieve the results until they have completed building.

API Limits

There are additional API limits in place on the Analytics API. You are not permitted to build more than 1000 Analytics builds per month through the API (you can build more than this through the web interface). This is irrespective of your Analytics package. If you would like this limit raised, please contact analytics@tweetmeme.com.

Methods

Build

Sends a request to the Analytics system top build a report for the specified URL. Accessible to anyone with an App ID and App Key.

URL: http://api.tweetmeme.com/analytics/build.format

Formats: xml, json, php

Parameters:

• appid: int your TweetMeme Application ID
• apikey: string your TweetMeme API Key
• url: string the full URL to the page you would like Analytics built for

Returns: a UID for the Analytics build

• uid: string the UID unique identifier for this Analytics build

Example Requests:

• http://api.tweetmeme.com/analytics/build.xml?appid=1&apikey=62214816674f86242c4d17802bd51820&url=http://tweetmeme.com

Example Output (in XML)

<result>
	<status>success</status>
	<uid>37758bd44025edb222022dcd1491c29g</uid>
</result>

Built

Returns a list of all Analytics that you have built, optionally filtered by domain. Accessible to anyone with an App ID and App Key.

URL: http://api.tweetmeme.com/analytics/built.format

Formats: xml, json, php

Parameters:

• appid: int your TweetMeme Application ID
• apikey: string your TweetMeme API Key
• (optional) domain: string the URL to filter domains by (e.g. http://tweetmeme.com)

Returns: a list of Analytics that have been built

• builtURLs: a list of domains that Analytics have been built for
  • name: string the domain name
  • id: int the unique ID of the domain
• builds: a list of Analytics builds that have been built – grouped by domain
  • id: int the unique ID of the Analytics build
  • builddate: datetime the date and time of when the Analytics were built
  • title: string the title of the page that Analytics were built for
  • url: string a link to view the Analytics on TweetMeme

Example Requests:

• http://api.tweetmeme.com/analytics/build.xml?appid=1&apikey=62214816674f86242c4d17802bd51820&url=http://tweetmeme.com

Example Output (in XML)

<result>
	<status>success</status>
	<builtURLs>
		<builtURL>
			<name>tweetmeme.com</name>
			<id>4733</id>
		</builtURL>
		...
	</builtURLs>
	<builds>
		<tweetmeme.com>
			<tweetmeme.co>
				<item>
					<id>621</id>
					<builddate>2009-10-12 15:01:33</builddate>
					<title>Tweetmeme - Hottest Stories on Twitter</title>
					<url>http://my.tweetmeme.com/analytics/621</url>
				</item>
				...
			</tweetmeme.co>
		</tweetmeme.com>
	</builds>
</result>

Get

Returns the HTML to display the built Analytics to the user. Access to this API call is only available to those with elevated permissions to do so. In order to get permission, please contact analytics@tweetmeme.com.

A CSS stylesheet and JavaScript file is available to render the HTML from this API call in a similiar way to on TweetMeme. Please contact analytics@tweetmeme.com for access to this.

Warning: This API call can return a significant amount of data – in the cases of larger stories, in the region of 5 Megabytes. Once you have retrieved this data you should store it on your server and not re-request it from TweetMeme.

URL: http://api.tweetmeme.com/analytics/get.format

Formats: xml, json, php

Parameters:

• appid: int your TweetMeme Application ID
• apikey: string your TweetMeme API Key
• uid: string the UID of the Analytics build you would like to retrieve

Returns: a list of HTML code blocks that can be used to render the Analytics to the user

Example Requests:

• http://api.tweetmeme.com/analytics/get.xml?appid=1&apikey=62214816674f86242c4d17802bd51820&uid=37758bd44025edb222022dcd1491c29g

Example Output (in XML)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<result>
	<status>success</status>
	<views>
		<tweets24>
			&lt;div&gt;&lt;div &gt;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;new Chart({cht: 'lc', chd: 't:0,100,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,100,0,0,100,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,100,0', chco: 'FF0000|ff3333|ff6666|ff9999|ffcccc', chtt: 'Last+24+Hours', chxt: 'x', chxl: '0:|23|22|21|20|19|18|17|16|15|14|13|12|11|10|9|8|7|6|5|4|3|2|1', });&lt;/script&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
		</tweets24>
		<tweets7>...</tweets7>
		<sources>...</sources>
		<tweet-time>...</tweet-time>
		<top-users>...</top-users>
		<trees>...</trees>
		<all-users>...</all-users>
		<locations>...</locations>
		<clicks-shorteners-chart>...</clicks-shorteners-chart>
		<clicks-shorteners>...</clicks-shorteners>
		<domains>...</domains>
		<tweets>...</tweets>
		<clicks>...</clicks>
		<tree-stats>...</tree-stats>
		<top-locations-chart>...</top-locations-chart>
		<users>...</users>
		<top-sources>...</top-sources>
		<top-domains>...</top-domains>
		<clicks-top-shorteners>...</clicks-top-shorteners>
	</views>
</result>

Note: Most of the content has been removed here, but it will be encoded in a similiar form for the other fields.

The Comments API is a collection of API calls that allow you to leverage the power of TweetMeme’s commenting system on your own platform.

Methods

Comment Firehose

Returns the most recent comments posted on TweetMeme, along with information on which URL they were posted on. Note: This page is cached for 60 seconds – polling any more often than that will result in your API usage quota being used up.

URL: http://api.tweetmeme.com/comments/firehose.format

Formats: xml, json, php

Parameters: None

Returns: a list of comments

• id: int the unique ID for the comment
• text: string the comment itself
  • Note: URLs are replaced with #{x}# where x is the media id for the URL (see media section)
• url_id: int the TweetMeme URL ID to which this comment refers
• retweets: int the number of retweets the comment has had
• user_id: int the TweetMeme User Id of the user
• created_at: datetime the date and time the comment was made
• (optional) media: media objects containing information on links in the comments (may not be returned if no links in comment)
  • id: int the TweetMeme Unique Id for the link
  • url: string the final URL for the link
  • alias: string a short URL for the link
  • title: string the title of the page
  • text: string a text excerpt from the page or a tweet about the page
  • url_count: int the number of retweets the link has had
  • comment_count: int the number of TweetMeme comments the page has had
  • media_type: int the media type of the story (news/image/video)
  • created_at: datetime the datetime of the first tweet about the story
  • media_thumb: string the URL of a thumbnail of the media, 0 if unavailable
• user: a user object containing data on the user who made the comment
  • id: int the TweetMeme User Id
  • tweeter: string the Twitter Username of the user
  • url: string the profile picture of the user
• story: a story object containing data on the story the comment was posted on
  • url: string the URL of the story
  • title: string the title of the page the URL points to
  • url_count: int the number of retweets the story has
  • comment_count: int the number of total comments the story has had
• url: string the direct URL to link to the comment

Example Requests:

• http://api.tweetmeme.com/comments/firehose
• http://api.tweetmeme.com/comments/firehose.json

Example Output (in XML) Note: This example has been trimmed, there were actually 100 <comment> elements in the response to this request.

<comments>
	<comment>
		<id>8227</id>
		<text>I've been looking forward to accessing #{1}# from my xbox</text>
		<url_id>213860974</url_id>
		<retweets>0</retweets>
		<user_id>14799427</user_id>
		<created_at>2009-10-12 14:27:51</created_at>
		<media>
			<medi>
				<id>12936914</id>
				<url>http://twitter.com</url>
				<alias>http://is.gd/52q</alias>
				<title>Twitter</title>
				<text>From David Wilson, MSW (social worker) and 20 year military (retired) veteran Douglass H. http://tinyurl.com/co98n9</text>
				<url_count>16325</url_count>
				<comment_count>0</comment_count>
				<media_type>news</media_type>
				<created_at>2009-02-19 07:22:06</created_at>
				<media_thumb>0</media_thumb>
			</medi>
			...
		</media>
		<user>
			<id>14799427</id>
			<tweeter>chris_alexander</tweeter>
			<url>http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/213713081/Portrait-med_normal.jpg</url>
		</user>
		<story>
			<url>http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/facebook-and-twitter-on-xbox-live-november-19-642049</url>
			<title>Facebook and Twitter on Xbox Live November 19 | News | TechRadar UK</title>
			<url_count>76</url_count>
			<comment_count>1</comment_count>
		</story>
		<url>http://tweetmeme.com/comment/213860974-8227</url>
	</comment>
	...
</comments>

Notes

• The number of comments that are displayed per minute will vary as we have changing comment volumes. We will try to include all comments posted on TweetMeme in this firehose.

Comments for URL

Returns comments posted on a particular URL

URL: http://api.tweetmeme.com/comments/get_url.format

Formats: xml, json, php

Parameters:

• url: string the full URL to get comments for

Returns: a list of comments

• id: int the unique ID for the comment
• text: string the comment itself
  • Note: URLs are replaced with #{x}# where x is the media id for the URL (see media section)
• url_id: int the TweetMeme URL ID to which this comment refers
• retweets: int the number of retweets the comment has had
• user_id: int the TweetMeme User Id of the user
• created_at: datetime the date and time the comment was made
• (optional) media: media objects containing information on links in the comments (may not be returned if no links in comment)
  • id: int the TweetMeme Unique Id for the link
  • url: string the final URL for the link
  • alias: string a short URL for the link
  • title: string the title of the page
  • text: string a text excerpt from the page or a tweet about the page
  • url_count: int the number of retweets the link has had
  • comment_count: int the number of TweetMeme comments the page has had
  • media_type: int the media type of the story (news/image/video)
  • created_at: datetime the datetime of the first tweet about the story
  • media_thumb: string the URL of a thumbnail of the media, 0 if unavailable
• user: a user object containing data on the user who made the comment
  • id: int the TweetMeme User Id
  • tweeter: string the Twitter Username of the user
  • url: string the profile picture of the user
• story: a story object containing data on the story the comment was posted on
  • url: string the URL of the story
  • title: string the title of the page the URL points to
  • url_count: int the number of retweets the story has
  • comment_count: int the number of total comments the story has had
• url: string the direct URL to link to the comment

Example Requests:

• http://api.tweetmeme.com/comments/get_url?url=http://www.amiando.com/ldntwestival.html
• http://api.tweetmeme.com/comments/get_url.json?url=http://tweetmeme.com

Example Output (in XML) Note: This example has been trimmed, there were actually 100 <comment> elements in the response to this request.

<result>
	<status>success</status>
	<comments>
		<comment>
			<id>2361</id>
			<text>Well, Actually I don't know about this well. But Really love to use this tweet button on my website. I think i gotta work out more!!!  </text>
			<url_id>26054116</url_id>
			<retweets>1</retweets>
			<user_id>288182720</user_id>
			<created_at>2009-09-15 06:47:20</created_at>
			<user>
				<id>288182720</id>
				<tweeter>luwislinn</tweeter>
				<url>http://s.twimg.com/a/1254440757/images/default_profile_1_normal.png</url>
			</user>
			<story>
				<url>http://www.tweetmeme.com/</url>
				<title>Tweetmeme - Hottest Stories on Twitter</title>
				<url_count>2533</url_count>
				<comment_count>44</comment_count>
			</story>
			<url>http://tweetmeme.com/comment/26054116-2361</url>
		</comment>
	</comments>
</result>

The Stories API allows access to TweetMeme’s data about particular stories that we have collected from Twitter.

Methods

Popular

Returns the most popular stories in the last 24 hours.

URL: http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/popular.format

Formats: xml, json, php

Parameters:

• (optional) count: int how many results to return per page, in the range 1-100, default 10
• (optional) category: string an optional category to filter results by, default none
• (optional) media: string a filter of media type (news/video/image) with default of all
• (optional) page: int the page of results you would like, in the range 1-100 with default 1

Returns: a list of stories with associated properties

• title: string the title of the page
• url: string the final URL of the page
• media_type: string the media type of the content (news/image/video)
• created_at: datetime the date and time of the first tweet posted containing this URL
• url_count: int the number of times this link has been tweeted
• comment_count: int the number of comments the story has on TweetMeme
• retweet: string a tweet to send in order to retweet this story (Note: the TweetMeme attribution must remain in place if you use this API call – see the API guidelines)

Example Requests:

• http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/popular.xml
• http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/popular.xml?media=news
• http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/popular.xml?media=video&count=20
• http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/popular.xml?page=2

Example Output (in XML)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<result>
	<status>success</status>
	<stories>
		<story>
			<url>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203803904574431151489408372.html</url>
			<media_type>news</media_type>
			<title>The End of the Email Era - WSJ.com</title>
			<created_at>2009-10-11 23:13:36</created_at>
			<url_count>745</url_count>
			<comment_count>0</comment_count>
			<alias>http://bit.ly/40GKxw</alias>
			<retweet>RT @tweetmeme The End of the Email Era - WSJ.com http://bit.ly/40GKxw</retweet>
		</story>
		...
	</stories>
</result>

Recent

Returns the most recent stories found by TweetMeme

URL: http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/recent.format

Formats: xml, json, php

Parameters:

• (optional) count: int how many results to return per page, in the range 1-100, default 10
• (optional) category: string an optional category to filter results by, default none
• (optional) media: string a filter of media type (news/video/image) with default of all
• (optional) page: int the page of results you would like, in the range 1-100 with default 1

Returns: a list of the most recent stories discovered by TweetMeme

• title: string the title of the page
• url: string the final URL of the page
• media_type: string the media type of the content (news/image/video)
• created_at: datetime the date and time of the first tweet posted containing this URL
• url_count: int the number of times this link has been tweeted
• comment_count: int the number of comments the story has on TweetMeme
• retweet: string a tweet to send in order to retweet this story (Note: the TweetMeme attribution must remain in place if you use this API call – see the API guidelines)

Example Requests:

• http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/recent.xml
• http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/recent.xml?media=news
• http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/recent.xml?media=video&count=20
• http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/recent.xml?page=2

Example Output (in XML)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<result>
	<status>success</status>
	<stories>
		<story>
			<url>http://mashable.com/2009/10/11/the-fun-theory/</url>
			<media_type>news</media_type>
			<title>The Fun Theory: Volkswagen Masters the Viral Video</title>
			<created_at>2009-10-12T02:30:12+00:00</created_at>
			<url_count>973</url_count>
			<comment_count>3</comment_count>
			<alias>http://retwt.me/PLSR</alias>
			<retweet>RT @tweetmeme The Fun Theory: Volkswagen Masters the Viral Video http://retwt.me/PLSR</retweet>
		</story>
		...
	</stories>
</result>

Categories

Returns a list of categories down to the specified depth, optionally filtered by a parent category.

URL: http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/categories.format

Formats: xml, json, php

Parameters:

• (optional) filter: string a string to filter the categories by (default is empty string)
• (optional) depth: int the depth of categories to return (range 1-10, default 1)

Returns: list of categories down to the specified depth, optionally filtered by filter

• display: string the display name of the category
• name: string the internal name of the category

Example Requests:

• http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/categories.xml
• http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/categories.xml?depth=2
• http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/categories.xml?filter=technology&depth=0

Example Output (in XML)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<result>
	<status>success</status>
	<categories>
		<category>
			<display>Comedy</display>
			<name>comedy</name>
			<categories>
				<category>
					<display>Animals</display>
					<name>comedy.animals</name>
				</category>
				<category>
					<display>Fail</display>
					<name>comedy.fail</name>
				</category>
			</categories>
		</category>
	</categories>
</result>

Notes

• The depth specifies the levels of children, relative to the filter, to return. By default, only the first level of children will be returned.
• Specifying a depth of 0 will return only the category specified by the filter. If the filter is empty, a depth of 0 will return an error.
• The filter must be in the format of the “name” parameter from the result. e.g. “technology.apple”, “comedy” and “sports.soccer” are all valid filters.

Tweets

Returns 10 tweets for the specified URL.

URL: http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/tweets.format

Formats: xml, json, php

Parameters:

• url: string the URL of the page you want tweets for
• from_id: int the last Tweet ID you have (it will return tweets after but not including this Tweet ID)

Returns: list of a maximum of 10 tweets for the specified URL offset by the specified page.

• user: a user object with data about the user who tweeted the story
  • tweeter: string the Twitter username of the user
  • Note: the rest of this User object is currently in development and fields may appear/disappear over the coming weeks. Please do not rely on data it provides.
• tweet: string the tweet text
• created_at: datetime the date and time the tweet was posted at
• source: string the source of the tweet, excluding the usual <a> link from the Twitter API
• id: string the Twitter ID of the tweet

Example Requests:

• http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/tweets.xml?url=http://tweetmeme.com
• http://api.tweetmeme.com/stories/tweets.xml?url=http://tweetmeme.com&from_id=117533549

Example Output (in XML) Note: This example has been trimmed, there were actually 10 <tweet> elements in the response to this request.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<result>
	<status>success</status>
	<tweets>
		<tweet>
			<user>
				<tweeter>fabricemassin</tweeter>
			</user>
			<tweet>Deezer Raises $9.5 Million More For Free Music Search And Streaming Service http://bit.ly/2SgfQT by @robinwauters (via @TechCrunch)</tweet>
			<created_at>2009-10-12 13:31:43</created_at>
			<source>Tweetie</source>
			<id>4808464354</id>
		</tweet>
		...
	</tweets>
</result>

Notes

• The tweets are ordered in descending date order – that is, the first tweet will be the most recent.
• As a real-time service, we only store tweets for any given URL for 7 days. Therefore, if you wish to maintain a list of all tweets for a particular URL, you will need to periodically query our API and store the results yourself. This does not affect the tweet count returned by the url_info Core API method, which always tracks the total tweets ever made against that URL.

The Core API provides data about URLs TweetMeme has collected from Twitter.

Methods

URL Info

Takes any URL posted to Twitter and resolves it to its original URL as well as details about that webpage, such as the title.

URL: http://api.tweetmeme.com/url_info.format

Formats: xml, json, php

Parameters:

• url: string the URL of the webpage to resolve

Returns: Info about the URL

• title: string the title of the page
• url: string the final URL of the page
• media_type: string the media type of the content (news/image/video)
• created_at: datetime the date and time of the first tweet posted containing this URL
• url_count: int the number of times this link has been tweeted
• comment_count: int the number of comments the story has on TweetMeme
• excerpt: string a string of text about the story, taken either from a tweet with the URL or from the page content itself
• (optional) thumbnail: string the URL of a thumbnail image relating to the story (taken from the page itself – may not appear if TweetMeme has not acquired an image for this URL)

Example Requests:

• http://api.tweetmeme.com/url_info?url=http://is.gd/lznv
• http://api.tweetmeme.com/url_info?url=http://www.tweetmeme.com

Example Output (in XML)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<result>
	<status>success</status>
	<story>
		<title>New Google Logo Celebrates The Barcode</title>
		<url> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/06/new-google-logo-celebrates-the-barcode/ </url>
		<media_type>news</media_type>
		<created_at>2009-10-07T05:44:02+00:00</created_at>
		<url_count>434</url_count>
		<comment_count>0</comment_count>
		<excerpt>
			Google&#8217;s new logo is a barcode which, as far as we can tell, says &#8220;Google.&#8221; Today is the 57th anniversary of the first patent on the bar code. Inventors Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver filed the patent on October 1949, and it was granted, No. 2,612,994 (pdf), on October 7, 1952. The original patent was for a system that would encode data in circles (a bulls eye pattern), so...
		</excerpt>
		<thumbnail>http://tweetmeme.s3.amazonaws.com/thumbs/207093919.jpg</thumbnail>
	</story>
</result>

We’ve been keeping in touch with Dan who gave us the details of how to get our TweetMeme button into Tumblr and now he’s done a fantastic job of getting our button into Posterous.

It turns out that the process is even easier than on Tumblr because there’s no javascript or iframe allowed in a Posterous theme (yet), so the only route left is to use the image based Tweetmeme button designed for RSS and email.

Go to http://posterous.com/main/account Click on the down arrow to the right of the “Post by email” button and click on “Theme my site”. Once that has loaded, there’s a tab in the top left labeled “Advanced” which will show you all the code.

Here’s the code I am using:

You should change the following parts:

To use this on your Posterous blog, insert it somewhere between {block:Posts} and {/block:Posts} so that the ?url={Permalink} actually picks up the individual post’s URL. I cheated a little by using the CSS that was designed to keep the date to the top left of each post’s title as a way to hold the Tweetmeme button in place – <div></div> – and I then put the post’s date stamp at the bottom of each post before the Comments.

If you need more info on including API keys for URL shorteners then check this help page on Tweetmeme, otherwise this should ‘just work’.

If you would like to see the full blog post and the TweetMeme button in action on a Posterous blog then do pop over to Dan’s site where he has all the details!  Thanks again for all your hard work Dan!

It is now possible to specify the text that is tweeted when users click on the Retweet button.

The system currently works by using the page’s title as the tweet text. For example, a page with the title “TweetMeme Blog » Retweet Button Explained” would result in the following tweet:

RT @talkTweetMeme TweetMeme Blog » Retweet Button Explained http://retwt.me/33K

It is now possible to remove parts of this text. Note: the text you set to use must be a subset of the page title. So you would be allowed to use the text “Retweet Button Explained” for the above example, but if you were to enter “Retweet Button Explained on TweeteMeme”, the system would fall back to using the whole title of the page.

Below is instructions on how to implement this feature on the various buttons TweetMeme offers.

WordPress Plugin

This feature is available in the TweetMeme Wordpress Plugin, versions 1.6 upwards. It will automatically configure itself to use the title of the blog post which the button is pointing to.

Web Button

If you have added the TweetMeme button yourself, then you can set the title using this method. Adding this tag to the HEAD section (between the <head> and </head> tags) of a page will override it’s title:

<meta name="tweetmeme-title" content="Retweet Button Explained" />

This will make any buttons that point to this page use this title for their tweet:

RT @talkTweetMeme Retweet Button Explained http://retwt.me/33K

WordPress custom install

If you have installed the button into your WordPress theme yourself, you can use the following code in your header.php template and all blog posts will use the post title as the text of the tweet:

<meta name="tweetmeme-title" content="<?php wp_title(''); ?>" />

And Remember…

There is one major caveat to this system. Our systems require the tweetmeme-title to be a strict subset of the page title. i.e. The tweetmeme-title must be derived directly from your original page title – if it is not, it will be ignored. This is to ensure that the tweet the button sends can always be predicted by the user to be relevant to the page they are reading.

As Twitter is getting more and more traffic worldwide, a retweet (RT) button for your blog becomes an essential marketing tool. It will help your readers easily tweet your posts and generate valuable traffic to your blog. The most popular button is the TweetMeme retweet button. Since we use TypePad for managing our LookupPage blog, and we found no content about how to add a retweet bottom to TypePad, we decided to share that information with you.

How does it work?

Retweeting is simply to repeat a user’s tweet. For example, you retweet when you encounter a tweet which you want to share with people that follow you.

The retweet button automatically generates the correct syntax of the retweet together with a TinyURL. Here is an example of a retweet of our “Google CV” blog post: “RT @LookupPage The Google CV http://bit.ly/2elis ”

How to install the button?

1. Sign in to your TypePad account
2. Go to your blog design tab (it must be an advanced template design).
3. Choose to edit your main index template.
4. Copy the below code at the beginning of the entry header )
5. Save your changes and you’re done.The TweetMeme retweet button code:

The TweetMeme retweet button code:

<div style=”float: right; margin-right: 0px;”>

<script type=”text/javascript”>

tweetmeme_style = “compact”;

tweetmeme_url = ‘<$MTEntryPermalink$>’;

tweetmeme_source = ‘your_twitter_user_name’;

</script>

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js”> </script>

</div>

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Many thanks toEhud Furman of http://blog.lookuppage.com for the How To article shown above! And don’t forget to follow them on Twitter