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.

1) In the Tweetie Settings, select Custom URL Shortener and you’ll get a screen like this:

2) Enter the following string replacing ‘{YOUR API KEY}’ with your awe.sm API Key (if you don’t have an awe.sm API Key yet, we appreciate your continued patience):
http://create.awe.sm/tweet?create_type=tweetie&api_key={YOUR API KEY}&target=%@

3) When writing your tweets, enter the Compose Menu and click the Shrink URLs button as seen here:

This will create awe.sm-powered URLs using whatever custom domain you have as your account default with the channel (share_type) ‘twitter’ and tool (create_type) ‘tweetie’.

If you’re a developer interested in integrating awe.sm support into your app, please check out our API documentation and feel free to drop us a line at developers [at] awe.sm.

A few weeks back I decided to build a button for my blog that would give me the same functionality of ‘retweet’ buttons, like the ones from TweetMeme and Backtype (both of which support awe.sm by the way ), for sharing on Facebook.

I built it in a weekend on top of our powerful Aggregate Data API, and then we decided some other folks might like it too. So, we put up a little splash page and started quietly asking people to test it. Mashable was the first major blog to launch it this past weekend, and were very helpful in providing feedback. You can now also find it live on The Next Web, and grab it for your own site at fbShare.me.

What it does:

• Displays the number of shares and on hover the total number of clicks for those shares (displays Facebook logo when 0 shares)
• Gives you a choice between a large or small button
• Tracks the shares from the button using your awe.sm API Key or fbShare.me links
• Allows you to add Google Analytics parameters to fbShare.me links

Please note, this is NOT an officially endorsed Facebook tool. It doesn’t have special access to secret Facebook APIs that tell you how many times a link has been shared on Facebook. The count and click numbers are only for share actions that happen via awe.sm. In addition to the shares that occur through the fbShare.me button, any that happen through other awe.sm-enabled sharing or syndication tools, like Sociable, AddToAny, and TweetPo.st, will also be counted.

We put this out there because we thought it was cool and hoped others would find it useful. It is also a great reference implementation for the kinds of valuable sharing tools that can be built on top of the awe.sm APIs. awe.sm is a social media campaign tracking platform for publishers, and we want to offer them the broadest selection of syndication and sharing tools possible. Our real value isn’t in building our own tools, it’s in helping the developers of the thousands of great tools out there offer publishers a way to connect those individual solutions together to form a cohesive system.

Our hope for fbShare.me is that it will inspire more great tools developers to incorporate awe.sm-powered functionality into what they’re building. So if you’re working on a social media syndication or sharing tool for publishers, please check out our APIs and feel free to drop us a line at developers [at] awe.sm.

Unfortunately, we’re going to have to continue to limit access to the beta for the foreseeable future. We’re a small team with a new product and our primary focus continues to be on delivering the best possible experience to our existing users. We currently communicate very closely with all of our customers to understand their needs and how we can improve the product to best serve them. Obviously this is quite a labor-intensive process, but we firmly believe it is the quickest route to delivering a great product to everyone else.

We truly appreciate your patience and are seriously bummed not to be able to give more folks access yet. If you’ve already filled out the survey, there’s no need to do so again. And if you want to discuss anything with us, drop a line to support[at]awe.sm (though please allow a couple days for a response). Please note if you’re a developer interested in exploring our APIs, we’re being a bit more liberal about granting access to http://developers.awe.sm so go ahead and apply.

Twitter Publisher supports both bit.ly and awe.sm to shorten the links going to Twitter, and it will even add Google Analytics campaign parameters to the bit.ly links for you (awe.sm does this automatically ). But the coolest feature IMHO is the ability to give the author of the post credit in the tweet. This is great for larger blogs with multiple authors. However if you’re just rolling solo, it’s not a huge advantage over Twitterfeed (which also supports awe.sm ).

We’re gonna test it out on this blog to see how it works, but probably stick with Twitterfeed on my personal blog for now.

Update: It looks like there are still some bugs in the Twitter Publisher plugin, specifically it is ignoring the setting to use awe.sm and using bit.ly instead. We’ve alerted Timan, and hopefully he will release a fix soon.

Update 2: The plugin should be working correctly now.

awe.sm for Publishers
Our mission here at the Snowball Factory is to help connect creators of interesting content with the people who love it. And we believe social media provides an incredibly powerful infrastructure to do that. awe.sm is the centerpiece of our efforts to make social media a more efficient, effective, and measurable marketing channel for content publishers. awe.sm integrates with the tools you already use to make the whole of your social media self-promotion efforts (e.g. pimping your latest blog post on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, etc) greater than the sum of the parts by giving you a comprehensive view of the resulting traffic *right in Google Analytics*. awe.sm is currently supported in Twitterfeed, AddToAny, TweetFace (which we built too ), and our version of the Sociable WordPress Plugin. We’ve been working with TechCrunch as well as a number of smaller publishers during our alpha, and as of today we will be handing out invites to publishers who complete our survey. For more information on our publisher offering, please drop us a line to publishers [at] awe.sm.

awe.sm for Developers
In building awe.sm, we realized that sharing analytics is a pain point felt by a broader group than just publishers and we wanted to make our solution available to others building applications with sharing components. To that end, awe.sm was built from the APIs up and developers can recreate any of our features (or build new ones of their own) entirely in their own apps. We like to think of it as analytics infrastructure-as-a-service. And we’re proud to already be powering features of Zentact, Famery, SimplyBox, and KISSmetrics. We’re still limiting access to our API documentation at this point. But if you’re a developer who would like to check it out, please send a brief description of your application and how you would like to use awe.sm to developers [at] awe.sm.

awe.sm Partners
Each publisher’s approach to social media marketing is different, and we don’t believe there is (or should be) a one-size-fits-all solution. And while we will build some tools, like TweetFace, ourselves when we can’t find existing ones that do what we want, we’d much rather partner with folks who are totally focused on making a great tool to solve a particular publisher need. That’s why we’re very excited to announce awe.sm support in AddToAny, one of the most innovative share widgets out there, to go along with our previously announced Twittefeed integration. In addition to recommending partner tools to awe.sm publishers, we also plan to offer an affiliate model for partners who drive premium awe.sm signups. So if you’ve got a publisher tool that you’d like to integrate with awe.sm, please hit us up at partners [at] awe.sm.

Private-Label URL Shorteners (What you can get right now!)
One of the most notable features of awe.sm is that it can shorten long URLs, which we’ve been told is particularly useful for this thing called Twitter that everyone is talking about . It is such a notable feature that a bunch of people asked us if we could do it using domains other than http://awe.sm, which we can. In fact, we’re already powering URL shorteners for some of the above mentioned partners including TechCrunch (tcrn.ch), KISSmetrics (klck.me), Topspin (t.opsp.in), and AddToAny (a2a.me). So starting today, we’re officially offering *private-label URL shorteners running on your domain starting at just $99 per year*.

For $99/year, you get:

• a hassle-free hosted solution with no set-up costs
• 10k shortened URLs per month and no limit on redirections
• full clickstream stats and Google Analytics integration
• support in all awe.sm-enabled publisher tools
• 99% monthly uptime money-back guarantee

We also offer advanced features like the ability to build your own stats UI as well as dedicated servers and higher SLAs. You can get started now or ping us for more info at domains [at] awe.sm.

See for yourself:

And here’s a link to the PDF version. Thanks to everyone who attended for being a great crowd and having some really insightful questions.

P.S. This is my second time presenting at BarCampLA. The last time was at BarCampLA 1 in 2006

The main reason I’ve been slacking on the blogging is because we’re getting very close to the private beta of the Snowball Factory’s first product, appropriately called awe.sm. And the reason I won’t be telling you more about awe.sm this week is because I’m at SXSW courtesy of my friend and the Snowball Factory’s first ever customer, Happyjoel — who of course *won* his trip here in a contest.

To celebrate the launch of awe.sm alpha customer Famery, the Snowball Factory is sponsoring a SXSW after-hours party tomorrow night at a top secret location.

When: Monday, March 16 @ 2:30am – ?

Where: It’s a sekret!

How: To get the exact details, either follow awe.sm on Twitter or sign-up for the awe.sm email list *by 6pm Central Time on Monday, March 16*

Why: Because we can!

And here are some photos to show you just how fun we are to party with:

P.S. In reality, this is more just me and my friends being bummed about the lack of places to party late-night in Austin coupled with the fact that Joel has a really big hotel room. So, we decided to buy a bunch of booze and invite people to party with us after the bars close. And being the scrappy entrepreneur that I am, I decided to see if we could turn it into a little publicity stunt for our new product. It’s still gonna rawk though, and you totally want to come!