Does This Ring The Death Knell for Twitter Growth? Twitter has stopped its Social Share Counts via Tweet and Follow Buttons. The implications to Your Social Media Optimization, Social Proof and Business Growth!
Well you have been sharing your content religiously, have had your followers do the same, i.e. Social Sharing at its best right!
Well Twitter has decided its not to be any more.
When we returned from Florence Italy we noticed a real drop in our Social shares! It looked like we had lost thousands of shares on our Blog. We at first couldn’t explain it. Can you relate?
Did you think that your readers and audience just got mean all of a sudden? That they aren’t sharing your stuff on twitter. Well Its not their fault or yours for that matter. Twitter decided that social shares via tweet buttons using apps like Shareaholic, Digg Digg, Sumome, Mornach Etc etc will neither count nor register anymore. Bah homburg 🙁
By the way you can follow us below, that still works, for now:
What is The Tweet Button and what does it mean for Social Sharing!
The Tweet button like the Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn G+ is similar to the image above. It is meant to count the number of Tweets that have been Tweeted linked to a specific URL specified in the button. Like other social medias, the count dis not and in no way reflected your optin ratios or success. In other words it did not reflect the impact of conversation about your content. We know that — it didn’t count replies, clicks on links, quoted Tweets, variants of your URLs etc. Lots of algorithms which we are supposed to find the trackable results via our Twitter analytics!
According to twitter, the count was created at a time when it was the only social sharing button on the web. It seems like a bit of Competition has got to them or they have run out of storage space…Both of which are understandable! There is no infinite space on the www supertrain…even the cloud is finite!
So today, the twitter count button or social sharing link is most commonly placed among a number of other share buttons. Accoprding to twitter “few of which have counts.” We beg to differ….
We had the most tweets on our social sharing side and we noticed a trend for most blogs. We can imagine most Pro-bloggers woke up with a drop in SEO too as social sharing does count as a criteria for Search engine Optimization ranking!
Below is what Twitter says about this “Hard Decision for a sustainable Platform! Apparently they recently announced a new design for the Tweet and follow buttons which you can read right there.
Watch Video Below for More Info on Social Sharing Can By Twitter:
The Implications to Social Sharing, Social Proof and SEO!
SEO: Many a blog/website has lost a shed load of Social Shares overnight…so we predict a drop in ranking for some. Some websites had hundreds of thousands Twitter social Sharing counts! What! And we see a lot of Mad web masters. They have pulled the rug from under our feet just like Facebook has been doing for yonks! Only this as not expected at all from Twitter.
Twitter argues that the social sharing or the “count API” has never existed as part of their public, supported and documented API endpoints; it was only intended for use by their own web widgets. and that they never committed to supporting use of such undocumented endpoints.
They allegedly consulted and surveyed some of their most influential Users…Maybe they used a Twitter poll…lolol!
Shutting down the Social sharing counter for Tweet button will make a dramatic negative social proof to all sites that base their social strategy on Twitter. Imagine how a page with 200k Tweets will look in social SEO now. that the counter has been down! Many are already displaying zero social shares. This will made many people unhappy, well other social networks must be clapping their hands in Glee!
This development is quite disappointing for brands and publishers, and will have caught many by surprise, maybe what Twitter intended. Gnip is not an affordable service for most companies. In our humble opinion, this is a backwards move for Twitter and will undermine its business relevance n the Social Media Marketing Platform…and maybe even longevity!
So may tools and plugins depend on this social sharing count, people are loosing income overnight as soon we will have to deactivate these twitter heavy plugins. For many of us bloggers and other users who relay on social proof to engage our audience , its awful. It ha killed overnight our social proof for new visitors. Twitter well knows that social viral influence was based predominantly on the counter value not so much the content – Imagine blogs like Neil Patel, Quicksprout Twitter counts have gone down overnight! Ours had dropped to below 500 on our Home page what! Its almost like our content wasn’t shared! So upsetting!
For more details on The reasons why they have discontinued the social Sharing button once again read their article here.
Follower counts continue to be available for the twitter follow button in the existing, horizontal layout.
Our Personal Thoughts on this Social Sharing debacle:
We here at Juleskalpuli marketing have been using the twitter social sharing count data as an essential tracking and social proof tool to evaluate the impact of our blog posts and content in the social and Twitter-sphere.
Needless to say, we are extremely disappointed by this either stupid or harsh move Twitter has made. Its a total lack of respect for the entrepreneurs and businesses that have spent a fortune on advertising and marketing to build up their twitter count as part of their social proof and marketing strategy.
The same community that helped Twitter go viral through the tools and services built on top of their platform. The plugins and developers who have definitely lost a huge chunk of their business overnight!
Developers and resources like Tweetjukebox! To us twitter has lost a great deal of credibility as a social sharing & marketing platform, it definitely could lose its position as one of the top Social media platforms! Twitter’s responses to questions prior to cutting the life blood of twitter social sharing was lackluster and bordering on “don’t care attitude!”
Fare thee well Twitter Social Sharing Button…will they reconsider…We don’t think so, yet we never say never!
If you have got value from this not so Great News…Please do share…Do tweet for sure. Like and let your team know esp bloggers.
We know you deserve more
Live.Lean.Love
Julie Syl & Pauli Kalungi
Skype: Julie.Kalungi1
Email: julieatJuleskalpauli[dot]com
Considering Coaching? Check out our Work with Me tab and Survey where we Help People Everyday.1
PS: IF YOUR UPLINE DOES NOT HAVE A STEP-BY-STEP BLUEPRINT FOR ONLINE MARKETING SUCCESS, CHECK THIS OUT (UNLESS YOU ALREADY HAVE TOO MANY LEADS) – CLICK HERE FOR INSTANT ACCESS
[thrive_leads id=’6783′]
Thanks for sharing Julie!
I was unaware of this change.
Take care,
Rob Switzer
You are most welcome Robert!
J&PK~
great insights. thanks for sharing
You are welcome, Thanks for stopping by Sheena!
J&PK~
Great information Julie. I had no idea that twitter made such changes. Social Media is always changing. It’s a good thing you noticed and can share this valuable information! Much success to you.
Hi Danielle,
We are happy to help spread the knowledge, sharing is caring.
Thanks for stopping by.
Pauli
As I have said I really don’t understand SEO–As you have probably seen I use Twitter a lot–but have never had the number of tweets show on on my vertical bar–and I don’t really remember if the number of followers ever showed on the button where people can click to follow me if they want–nost of my followers come from giveaway linkies–they are still showing the number of tweets if you click into the tweet itself-and if you go into your account it tells you the number of followers you have and how many you follow and how many tweets you have put out there—am I missing something here?
Hey Michele,
You arent missing much here girl. ONlY That Twitter is not supporting the TWEET COUNTS BUTTON on your blog anymore…
They will not be showing statistics of said tweets and you will no longer be able to use that as a social proof of product or content popularity!
Kinda big deal for many that paid their hard earned cash to focus on twitter for business and social proof! Does that make sense?
They have come up with a “Paid” solution for serious entrepreneurs…that doesnt half do as much as the retweet count button did for a heck of a lot of money!
Julie
Thats exactly what twitter wants Michele. They want people to log into twitter to check their stats, to retweet other stuff and OF COURSE SEE THE ADVERTS.
lots of people were using 3rd party apps to access their twitter tracks and information. Twitter was getting a load of disgruntled advertisers…so we imagine they are forcing users to head to Twitter live for your tweetfix!
Oh, I seriously feel like as soon as I get one aspect of social media down to a science, it changes! LOL Mercy! Thanks for the heads up on this one!
No lesson learnt is ever a waste Kristen. We can still retweet each other’s content it just doesn’t show.
Of course less integral people in syndications may have a field day!
You are most welcome
Jules