Twitter has just launched a “follow” button for websites, which allow Twitter users to follow accounts right from the sites themselves.
“For publishers and brands, adding the Follow Button to your website and using Twitter to stay connected with your audience is a powerful combination,” says Twitter’s Brian Ellin. “People who follow your account are much more likely to retweet and engage with your Tweets, and to repeatedly visit your website.”
Interestingly, you can’t “unfollow” the brand with the button once you’re following it, like you can “unlike” a Facebook “like” from the button on a piece of content. Granted, when “liking” a brand (rather than a piece of content) on Facebook, it operates basically the same way.
Once you’re following the brand, the button will show you a box of recent Twitter activity from the brand, like so:
Twitter engineer Ryan Sarver tweeted:
@rsarver
Ryan SarverAlong with the Follow Button, we shipped JS Events for all of our buttons and Web Intents. Read more here: http://t.co/oJOFUvm
9 minutes ago via Twitter for Mac · powered by @socialditto
Twitter has launched the follow button with 50 partner sites. Among these are: Aol, Justin Bieber, CBS News, Fox News, WordPress.com, and Sports Illustrated.
The button should help brands increase their Twitter follow count, as it, like the Facebook “like” button will become a universally recognizable symbol, no doubt, and users will realize that they can easily follow you on Twitter without leaving the page they’re on, which creates less friction in the process. Sounds like a win for brands to me.