Part of the reason for this post is to announce that Social.com has just been updated to be consistent with how Twitter now handles Unicode characters.  Previously the Twitter 140 character limit was actually a byte limit (A unicode character can take 2-4 bytes).   This was obviously disappointing to non English speaking users who found that they had much fewer characters than 140 in which to post.

I’d like to thank our user @Ninoo for first letting us know about the issue with counting Japanese characters.  We had overlooked the change that Twitter had made which was discussed here – http://j.mp/coMS9k where Matt Sanford (of Twitter) was discussing the change last Sept, 2009.

ありがとう  Ninoo

(Thanks in Japanese)

- Scott

“Social.com announces general availability of its cutting-edge suite of Social Media Contribution and Engagement tools”

You can view the press release here.

Be Social!

- Scott

We decided to make the name change to reflect our ambitions for offering premium social media tools.    We also thought the name Social.com was pretty cool …

If you are using BigTweet with Google Reader, or are using a BigTweet Bookmarklet, Button or WordPress plugin, please begin to replace those tools with the Social.com equivalents.

- Scott

Update:  Since the renaming of BigTweet to Social.com, the instructions for integration with Google Reader are located here.

- Scott

I’m pleased to announce that it is now also available as a WordPress Plugin.

You can download the plugin from the WordPress.org Plugin Directory.

The BigTweet WordPress plugin can be customized in several ways from the Plugin Settings panel, controlling the positioning, label text, button type etc.

Update:  The plugin has been renamed.  You can visit the Social.com WordPress Plugin page for information about downloading.

- Scott

I’m happy to announce BigTweet’s first widget – a button that I developed using the Clearspring platform.

The button will work on all web sites and is also configurable.   There are 3 button types including a compact version as well as a button without a count (for your Start page, etc).

The colors are all adjustable as is the button label.   There is even a means to control the default title, link and message that appears when BigTweet is invoked from the button.

Head over to the BigTweet Button page to learn how to create your own personalized button.

Update:  The button has now been renamed.  You can visit the Social.com Button page to grab a button for your web site.

- Scott

With the introduction of this feature, BigTweet is also now displaying your profile image so that it is obvious which profile you have currently selected.

If you don’t wish to display your profile image, simply select “Hide Image” from the drop down menu.

There is currently support for up to four different Twitter usernames.  What if you wish to swap out one of the four for a different fifth username?  The “Add Profile” option will change to a “Replace Profile” option once you have used all the available slots.  Choosing this selection will let you swap out the oldest username in your list for a new one.

Deleted your browser cookies? Your collection of profiles is not tied to any one account, but rather stored in browser cookies.  If you delete your cookies, you will need to login again to restore your profiles.

- Scott

I included quite a few code samples and several references.

Hopefully this might save a fellow Perl hacker some time in putting together their own implementation.

- Scott

I think I’ve had the most fun enhancing BigTweet while adding Ping.fm support.  Ping.fm really adds a whole new dimension to what you can do with BigTweet.

and more …

Imagine surfing the web and quickly posting a link with BigTweet to just … Facebook.

On another web page you share a link with Twitter and Cc your FriendFeed account.

Perhaps you’d like a quick blog entry that includes a snippet of text you highlighted from a web page that you can then post to Blogger.

This is all possible now with the Ping.fm support that was added to BigTweet yesterday.

- Scott

Last night I added OAuth support to BigTweet for logins to Twitter. What does this mean?

OAuth allows an application like BigTweet to obtain authorization to post to Twitter without requiring that you supply your password to the application. This is a win for everyone and goes a long way toward enhancing the security of the process.

BigTweet takes this a step further. We encrypt the OAuth “token” that we get from Twitter that allows us to post on your behalf, and use the secure https protocol whenever we communicate with Twitter.

Security of your experience with BigTweet is a top priority and we are happy to be able to now offer this enhancement.

Please note though that Twitter OAuth support is currently in “beta” status, and there may be occasions where we need to revert back temporarily to the previous username/password method.

- Scott