Twitter introduces Follow button

Twitter has unveiled a Follow button, looking and working rather like its existing Tweet button, but for immediately following a user rather than sharing information. According to a blog post by Twitter's Brian Ellin, more than 50 sites had already added the button by the time it was officially launched, "making it easy for you to discover the Twitter accounts of your favorite reporters, athletes, celebrities, and other personalities". Said sites included IMDB, Fox News, The Telegraph and Wired.

As with Facebook's Like button, the Twitter Follow button is a shortcut to engagement, enabling a user to immediately follow someone with a single click, rather than having to access the user's feed and then follow from there. In the aforementioned blog post, Ellin argued that people who follow your account are "much more likely to engage with your Tweets, and to repeatedly visit your website," and with Facebook's Like button having proven phenomenally successful, Twitter no doubt hopes its equivalent will help its service grow and enhance its social graph.

Adding a Follow button is a simple process, and Twitter offers the usual button-creation page. Like the Tweet button, the Follow button also has JavaScript call-backs, enabling you to send data to your analytics engine. There are also a number of customisation options, providing the means to change the appearance of the button and the information displayed on your website.

The Twitter Follow button's arrival follows rumours that Twitter is to launch its own photo-sharing service (named 'Twimg') and possibly also have a level of integration into Apple's upcoming mobile operating system upgrade, iOS 5.