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

The current design was launched in 2011, so the buttons were about due for a refresh:

Twitter said in an announcement on its Developers forum (via Marketing Land):

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 other Twitter news, they’re testing a new user polling feature.

Images via Wikimedia Commons, Twitter