In September, Twitter announced a new design for its tweet and follow buttons, which sites all over the web include on their many pages.

As part of that, Twitter said it would remove the share counter displayed along side the tweet button. At the time, the company explained:

Tweet buttons make authoring a Tweet from the context of a current webpage quick and easy. We are simplifying the Tweet button by removing the share counter displayed alongside the button. This new display removes the count and counturl display parameters, and will render in the same pixel dimensions as a Tweet button configured without a share count today.

The Tweet button has displayed share count over the last five years by querying a JSON endpoint hosted on various domains. These private JSON endpoints have been used by third-party developers over the years to retrieve a simple share count of any URL. These endpoints will be shut down next month when the Tweet button removes its share count feature. The Twitter REST API’s search endpoints are the best way to gather ad-hoc information about a URL shared on Twitter; full-archive search counts are available from Gnip.

In October, Twitter discussed the changes further and said it would shiop the changes by this Friday, November 20.

If viewable share counts are important to you, you’ll still be able to obtain this information from third parties. BuzzSumo, for example, announced this week that it has a new Chrome extension to provide it.

Image via Wikimedia Commons