As Twitter keeps growing in popularity, more websites are getting “Twitter friendly”.  Whether this is adding a follow me button or ways to Tweet out the content, the web is getting more “Twittified”.  But where is the real news, you might ask?  Well when you put it that way, nothing here is “news”.  However, I think it’s sometimes healthy to take a step back from the hugeness of YouTube, new search engine launches, and social network acquisitions and take a look at trends on the web.

The fact that just two years ago, all the rage was to add Delicious and Digg buttons is evidence enough of how fast the web moves.  But you probably knew that already.  What’s interesting, though, is that Twitter buttons have begun to replace social buttons from other sites as the most prominent buttons on the web.  Now that is real change.  When your social network was all the rage two years ago but now it might not even get a button on blogs across the web, it’s telling of not only how quickly the web moves, but also how fickle the web is: people are ready to hop on to the next new thing and leave whatever it is they were using before.

Twitter-related buttons can be prominently seen in many places on the web now, especially on blogs – where it’s easy to implement with plugins and embeddable code.  But let me emphasize one last thing: I’m not saying that Twitter-related buttons are replacing buttons from other sites.  What I am saying is that Twitter-related buttons are replacing buttons from other sites as the most prominent, top-most, brightest social button on the web.  Take TNR, for example: we have a fairly large ReTweet button right at the top of our posts.  Readers can still Digg, Reddit, BuzzUp, add to Facebook, and even email our posts (as well as many other services) using the ShareThis link on the bottom of each post, but Twitter takes center stage.  What service will take center stage two years from now?  Talk to me in the comments!

Notice the lack of a Twitter button

I don’t think I need to tell you how important Twitter has become (and is continuing to become).  You know, it doesn’t matter if the social network is growing by leaps and bounds, or that it’s generating three to five posts on some of the most prominent tech blogs on the planet.  Yet the social button on TUAW – the Unofficial Apple Weblog – doesn’t have an option to share via Twitter.  TUAW is using the social button provided by AddThis.  But the interesting thing is that the AddThis button includes Twitter as an option by default.  Why anyone would disable the option to Tweet a post is beyond me.

Actually, that’s exactly what I was planning on doing when reading this post on TUAW.  But without the option to Tweet the post… well, no Tweet for TUAW.

On a more serious note, this is aimed to be a mini “feedback” post and less of a criticizing one.  I hope TUAW adds Twitter in its social button loop ASAP.

Last week, I was checking my bacn account on Yahoo! Mail and noticed that Twitter’s new follower email looked different.  The newly-redesigned email (pictured below) sent out by the ever-growing social network is a winner – both from a design and a functionality standpoint.

For starters, the new email that left Twitter labs has Twitter’s logo on it (something the old email was missing – pictured below) as well as the familiar “cloud” background – which makes the message instantly identifiable.  On top of that, the email now includes a lot more useful information about your new follower: the amount of followers the user has, how many updates the user has posted, as well as the number of other Twitter users your new follower is following, are all displayed to the right of the user’s Twitter avatar.  Rounding out the newly-redesigned email is a link to the user’s profile, a link to block the user, and a link to turn off email notifications altogether.  All around, this is a much-needed update to Twitter’s new follower email notification.Surprisingly, Twitter is not the first service to offer emails with more information about your new follower.  Twimailer (picture below) offered this service in the beginning on March (2009) and redirected any new follower emails through its own email servers, which then were routed to the end-user’s mailbox.  Topify is another service that takes took care of Twitter’s lackluster new follower emails.  But now that Twitter offers the same functionality offered by Twimailer and Topify with the standard Twitter service, what will become of these services?  This seems to be a common occurrence when it comes to “supporting” services – ones that build on top of another service/use another service as a platform.  To illustrate how this happens here’s an example: as of today, there are many voice recorders for the iPhone in the iTunes App Store.  But once iPhone OS 3.0 is released, they will – for the most part- become useless, as the new iPhone OS will have a bundled voice recorder.  This is exactly what happened with Twitter’s newly-redesigned new follower emails and Twimailer and Topify.  Unless Twimailer and Topify provide extra functionality, they’re dead.  I the same light, voice recorders will become useless once OS 3.0 hits – for the most part.  Why for the most part?  If third-party voice recorders provide extra functionality, they will still be of value.  To take this example one step further, picture Twitter releasing its own iPhone Twitter App to compete with the likes of Tweetie and Twitterific; if it’s free, then Tweetie and Twitterific will have a much tougher time competing.  To make things worse for Twimailer nor Topify, neither seem to have a business model as of today.

Update: Topify offers me the ability to reply to a direct message by replying to Topify through email, something Twitter doesn’t itself provide in its email service.  But is this enough for Twitter users to use Topify?

One thing I would like to see Twitter add to the redesigned new follower emails is the user’s profile summary.  But perhaps Twitter wants me to click through to the site to see that information.  Something tells me, though, that it’s not of Twitter’s primary concern.

Twitter's newly-redesigned new follower email

Twitter's old new follower email

Twimailer new follower notification email

A standard iPhone notification window

Now that we know what’s taken Apple so long to roll out its Push Notification Service (PNS), we can begin to look forward to all the new functionality  it will bring to the iPhone.  One of the most disruptive features that the PNS will enable is the ability to be notified of Twitter updates directly through iPhone’s standard notifications – all courtesy of iPhone Twitter apps such as Tweetie, TwitterFon, Twinkle, or all the other Twitter clients available in the App Store (iTunes links).  What does this mean for iPhone-using Twitterrers?  It means that Twitter updates delivered via SMS/text message are a thing of the past.  It also means instant Twitter updates.  And herein lies the rub.

Given that Twitter users follow more than a handful of other Twitter users, it would seem problematic to receive all the updates of different Twitterrers at the same time – especially if the Tweets are in the form of an iPhone notification – it would be like getting 20-30 text messages at the same time.  In fact, it can very quickly lead to information overload – which in itself can cause headaches, screams for desperation, and the much-feared technology addiction so many of us try to avoid.  In either case, instant push notifications to the iPhone will cause a big shift in Twitter usage – leading users to carefully select which Twitter users’ updates they would like to be notified of on their phone instantaneously.  And from then on, the usage scenarios will get very interesting and – dare I say – new: whose Tweets will I pick as a Twitter user to be delivered to me at any time?  Why will I pick that particualar Twitter user?  What is that perfect Tweet-to-notification balance for a Twitter to be on my instant-notification list?

What’s so colossal here?  It’s not immediately apparent – but its the fact that Twitter users will now carefully pick whose updates are actually important enough to interrupt them throughout the day via an iPhone pop-up notification.  In that regard, I can see only a few Twitterrers per user being on this super-important “instant update” list and these users will have higher levels of interaction with those who get their updates.  The opportunities for companies and organizations to market real-time (such as last-minute promotions) is greatly increased as well.

What do you think?  Will the ability to get instant push notifications of Twitter updates to your iPhone change your following habits?  Will you follow only certain people or will you allow only the updates of a few be pushed to you and thus give them the ability to interrupt you in whatever you’re doing?  Talk to me in the comments.

PS: the ability to receive push notifications via the Apple Push Notification Service will save money for the user (no SMS charges to worry about) and Twitter (same here – only for outgoing).  The carriers are the ones to suffer here.  I know this last piece brings tons of joy to some.

Yesterday I published a link to a tutorial by our talented and adorable Lizette Gagné – in which she outlined (in text and in video/audio forms) the steps to change the TweetDeck logo back to its original “sans-yellow” form.  That tutorial was for the Mac and today we figured out how to change TweetDeck’s icons on the Windows platform.  So as promised, head on over to this post on Lizette’s blog and get rid of that yellow background for yourself!

On a side note – I’m starting to actually like the yellow background of the new logo.  On my Mac, I enabled the option to periodically change my desktop backgrounds; when the background is black, it makes the black bird icon difficult to see in the OS X Dock.  The yellow border makes it stand out and visible if the desktop background is black/dark.  Being visible… well, that’s always always a good thing, right?

On episode 23 of the (internationally-acclaimed) TechNest Report podcast, our lovely co-host Lizette Gagné vented, ranted, and otherwise expressed her frustration about the new TweetDeck icon in version 0.25 of the popular Twitter (and now Facebook) client.  But she didn’t just stop there.  Letting her actions speak louder than words, she created a video tutorial that guides Mac-using folk in getting the original icon back (Windows version coming soon)!

Lizette has 2 version of the tutorial: a written one and a video one – with the video posted after the break.