It’s been a little over a month since we first launched our sharecount button for Facebook and what a month it’s been. With very little promotion, our weekend coding project was quickly being served on over 5M pageviews per day. And now, Facebook has released an official version of their own.
As part of Facebook’s button release, they also announced a new API for pulling the share data directly from them. They were kind enough to give us a preview of this API, and we actually launched a new version of our button using the combined Facebook and awe.sm share data over the weekend. Here’s what’s new:
- Uses combined share data from Facebook and awe.sm for the most complete stats
- Cleaner look and slightly taller (9px) large button (it is now 53px wide by 69px tall)
- Ability to customize the background and text colors of the badge in the large button
- When there are no shares, the badge in the large button is clickable as a sharing interface
We also upgraded our WordPress Plugin to accommodate these changes and include some user requests:
- Support color customization in plugin
- Added the ability to disable the button from appearing on Pages (vs Posts)
- Improved plugin performance by eliminating javascript
At this point, our version of the button is primarily targeted at existing awe.sm publishers. But, there are a few reasons other folks might want to use it over the Facebook version:
- You think ours is purdier
- You like our WordPress Plugin
- You want to use the Google Analytics integration
Please let us know if you have ideas on how we can make the button even more useful.
