I had been using TweetMeme for the last month or so, which puts the Tweet thing with your Tweet Count by your posts… and then read recently in the Times that Twitter had finally made their own Tweet Button for use on blogs or any website where you want users to be able to tweet the article or post etc.

I guess that puts an end to TweetMeme, although they say they are working with Twitter on the new button.

Here’s the link to make your own Twitter button — Twitter Button Page.

Of course I lost all my counts that had been saved in TweetMeme to they’re all set to 0 now.

I added it to the Store sidebar and I’m putting it up now in this blog.

One thing to note – if you’re not using self-hosted WordPress, i.e your using something like blah-blah.wordpress.com it won’t work, at least the button I chose won’t work, because it uses javascript which ain’t allowed on wordpress.com

Another thing – you’ll have to stick the thing into your WordPress template files, where you want it to show up, i.e. if you want it for each post you’d need to stick it in single.php.

Tweetmeme used to do all this sort of stuff for you, including positioning, and a bunch of other nice tidbits.

So, what I did just now, sticking it in the widget panel of the blog doesn’t make much sense… I’ll have to put it in the wordpress template for single posts and pages for it to work properly.  Also, although they don’t call it a beta – I’ve had enough whales showing up with Twitter to be a bit hesitant about it slowing things up… but we’ll see.

I remember when I was writing software, I was always thinking, what if the big company writes this before I get it really launched.  With Tweetmeme they reallly had that thing accepted everywhere… and for Twitter to make their own… that’s got to be painful unless they get bought out.

* * *

And the answer is.  There are already plugins for wordpress.com sites and for self-hosted sites like this one.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweetbutton-for-wordpress/

Takes the place of TweetMeme.  Very very similar look and feel in the dashboard.  Basically looks and works like TweetMeme but with a few additional options that the “official” twitter button has.

and

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/new-tweet-button/

for the WordPress hosted blog.

Hey, what else could you ask for?