BackType

Twitter has become an increasingly important part of online conversation, especially to us here at BackType. We’re focused on improving the way you discover news online; not only does news sometimes break on Twitter, but billions of reactions to news are now published in 140 characters or less. However, often the vast majority of reactions were RT-ed or come from Twitter bots; those reactions can be pretty uninteresting, even spam-like.

In pursuit of creating the best search engine for news and opinions, we built technology to discern between the interesting and non-interesting tweets so we can show you the best tweets reacting to news in our search results:

Today, we’re releasing the feature across our website as well as in widget and WordPress plugin forms to help bloggers/publishers deliver the same value to their readers. In fact, the plugin is running right here on this blog underneath each post: it will show you the best reactions from Twitter; if we haven’t found any yet, it lets readers tweet directly from the widget.

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WordPress announced the release of version 2.9 “Carmen” today; we’ve updated our WordPress plugins for support. BackType Tweetcount was updated and you’ll need to upgrade to version 2.0 if you’re running WordPress 2.9. BackType Connect did not require an update, so if you’re already running version 0.2.5 you should be fine.

Bitly Pro Support

One of the unique features of our Tweetcount button is its support for custom URL shorteners – we debuted with support for short URLs powered by Awe.sm. Today, we’ve updated Tweetcount to also updated to support Bitly Pro; the button will work with your custom Bitly short URLs. Once you’ve obtained your custom Bitly-powered short URL, visit the BackType Tweetcount options page and enter your API credentials.

Tweetcount now supports: bt.io (default), awe.sm (custom), bit.ly, bit.ly pro, su.pr, digg.com and tinyurl.

Here’s a quick update with some new tools for BackType Search:

Search Plug-in

Now you can search comments quickly and easily whether you’re on BackType.com or not using our Search Plug-in for Firefox 2+ and Internet Explorer 7.

WebMynd Firefox Extension

BackType Search has been included in the WebMynd Firefox Extension, which allows you to personalize Google search results with the information sources you value most. (more…)