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Twitter is quickly shaping up to be a powerful force in the social media world. Today, its building up its core service by absorbing a commonly used Tool; The Tweet Button. Often left to third party services and some clever HTML, it’s being officially ‘introduced’ by Twitter making it easier for websites to get visitors to Tweet and Retweet links.

Building Upon TweetMeme’s Work

The Tweet Button, responsible for handling story and link promotions through Twitter is most commonly known as the Retweet button created by TweetMeme. This button can be easily integrated in to any website design but TweetMeme expects users to migrate from their solution to Twitter’s official option. Founder Nick Halstead had this to say “We expect people to switch, and we support that.” Whether the two services will coexist remains to be seen, but at 750 million daily Retweet impressions, I don’t think TweetMeme has much to worry about. Halstead is optimistic: “The buttons were never our core business, we make our money from selling filtered data – not from buttons. If buttons made you money we would be very rich.”

TweetMeme’s Alternate Approach

However, Twitter is not totally copying the Tweet button to claim as its own; it worked with TweetMeme to license some of the backend technology. TweetMeme Pro, territory Twitter isn’t looking to get in to, will still be available. But, TweetMeme is starting to shift its business away from Twitter towards analyzing realtime data streams. The company is aiming to bring this to the market under the name DataSift which would help developers analyze data coming in from millions of Tweets.

However, smaller Twitter developers could be worried by Twitter’s move. The impression given is if you develop something popular, Twitter will absorb it. This resolution could crush any small developer house and prevent new ideas from coming to the market. Are you a small time developer that integrates with Twitter? What are YOU’RE thoughts on the issue of Twitter absorbing companies that create Tools to use with the microblogging service?

Via: TechCrunch