It’s Official: We’re No Longer Updating Our Twitter Accounts, We’re Tweeting
Robin Wauters
Mar 9, 2010

Twitter has quietly changed the wording on the button users need to press to update their statuses on the Twitter.com website. It took them 10 billion (or so) tweets to realize we don’t ‘Update’, we ‘Tweet’.

A lot of people are noticing the change, although I have to say I had to hit the refresh button of my browser a couple of times before I saw it too. Could be Twitter bucket testing or a caching issue on my side.

Update: it changed back to ‘Update’

This is of course a minor interface change and likely has nothing to do with the “nifty features” that were supposedly soon finding their way to the Twitter web interface, which is still the most popular client for, well, tweeting.

As a reminder: Twitter considers the word “tweet” to be a trademark of theirs, even though it hasn’t been officially assigned to the company yet.

Hat tip to @Orli for the heads up and the TwitPic.

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  • http://www.techretold.com Shan

    Good change!

  • Omri

    My life look so much different now.

    It’s like

    Before….

    and

    After…

    I don’t even remember how it was back then

    when the tweet button was actually just

    “Update”.

  • http://andrescatalan.wordpress.com andrescatalan

    This is yet not happening in the Spanish-localized Twitter homepage.

    I wonder if they will go for “Tweet” or rather for an awkward translation…

  • http://www.classifiedsforfree.com/blog Free Classifieds Blog

    Can they trademark a generic dictionary word like tweet? I doubt it.

  • Robin Wauters

    I know, right.

  • http://www.biblicalstudiesandmore.blogspot.com Joanne

    How funny, my husband, brothers, sisters, neices and nephews all still look the same too. I never noticed I was updating; I just tweeted………

    Too funny… I am so into tweeting never did I look to see if I was updating.

    OMG laughing so hard…

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1498411521 Michael Boyd

    A word changed on twitter’s main site. OMG? REALLY? THANKS FOR TELLING ME!

    /care /slit /not-blog-post-worthy-IMO

  • Jeff

    Note to Twitter: “Considering” you own a trademark and owning a trademark are two entirely different things. Nice try.

  • Lou S. Cruz

    I love Twitter….. http://thebig.smi.sh/

  • David

    They never announced this but do you guys remember when you were able to click and make someone “unfollow” you a few months ago? I think they had this feature for about a day and then removed the feature. My guess is that people will just follow you back anyways if you don’t block them.

  • Tornadoes28

    Just more proof that Twitter is lame and getting lamer. What a stupid service.

  • Tornadoes28

    You’re lame.

  • matt

    now if twitter would get rid of “what’s happening?”, people would just “tweet” how they do every day, which is WHATEVER THEY WANT.

  • http://techneur.com JP

    Hmm… I wonder if they were the buyers of retweet.com then??

  • http://favit.com/marfi Martin

    Now that you mentioned it I realized I never paid attention as to what the button was saying anyway. Plus, you Retweet, you do not ReUpdate :) Therefore at least of consistency point of view – it was expected, normal, etc. :)

  • Snootch

    twitter changes a label on a button and it make news on one of the largest tech blogs.

    ladies and gentlemen a new low has been reached.

  • http://coderocker.com Mauricio

    Mine still shows as “Update”. Slow roll out maybe?

  • Smotch

    ladies and gentlemen we have reached a new low.

    Also be aware the TC Nazi regime are deleting comments.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000677690410 Liam Berry Tea

    Annoyingly it is back to “update”

    Always felt it sounds a little unfriendly and too formal like that.

    ******************************************************************

    Follow Me on Twitter & I’ll Follow Back in just a few hours at the Most!

    I have over 18,000 Followers at this second.

    http://twitter.com/PrayMaddyMcCann

    ******************************************************************

  • http://www.comedycentral.com/tosh.0/2010/03/09/youre-officially-tweeting/ You're Officially 'Tweeting' | Tosh.0 Blog

    [...] TechCrunch reports that Twitter is in the midst of formally changing all of our "Update" buttons into "Tweet" buttons as their graphic above shows. [...]

  • bobby

    seems every other topic is facebook this twitter that…maybe time for a social crunch section for those who care…twitter updating a button label isn’t really breaking news in the technology sector

  • ok

    can we get some real news? every error or small new text on twitter doesnt require a new article, no matter how much of a twitter fanboy you are.

  • Marcus

    I am not a Lawyer…..but wouldn’t using the term “tweet” prominently somewhere on their site help establish the trademark?

  • oyhoh

    can we get some real news? every error or small new text on twitter doesnt require a new article, no matter how much of a twitter fanboy you are.

  • ijoijoij

    noone cares what the mac-using twitter users consider as their trademark

  • Sam

    They still have Update on their mobile site… http://mobile.twitter.com/

    However, the new mobile site on Mobile WebKit looks much better than the old version that shows up for other mobile browsers.

  • tbag

    Twitter is stupid, only 12 year old girls and pedophiles use it.

  • TechNonsense

    Seriously TC, THIS is what you write about? You suck even more than the stupid twitter.

  • rita

    Twitter growth may be the fastest growing, but i doubt that they can replicate the growth they had last year.. Didn’t we receive reports that twitter’s growth is reaching a plateau?

  • http://trendygossip.com/laughs-allowed/youre-officially-tweeting/ You’re Officially ‘Tweeting’ | Trendy Gossip

    [...] TechCrunch reports that Twitter is in the midst of formally changing all of our "Update" buttons into "Tweet" buttons as their graphic above shows. [...]

  • http://www.digidave.org Digidave

    May I second that. I really need TechCrunch to fill my RSS feed with image changes on Twitter????

    Like you said: We already knew it was called a tweet. That Twitter just found this out is lame (agreed) but not revolutionary.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=13303029 David Murphy

    Uh, yeah, only 12 year old girls and pedophiles AND EVERYONE else uses it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=594153546 Clint Pee

    It still says update on my twitter account,no change has happend yet.

    The Padrino
    http://www.thepadrino.com

  • tatsuke

    MG?

  • http://yoshy.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/links-for-2010-03-10/ links for 2010-03-10 « 個人的な雑記

    [...] It’s Official: We’re No Longer Updating Our Twitter Accounts, We’re Tweeting (tags: twitter) [...]

  • Bobby
  • http://catalandr.es/2010/03/pios-trinos-gorjeos/ Andrés Catalán | Píos, trinos, gorjeos

    [...] Twitter pretende patentar el uso de la palabra tweet (vía TechCrunch). De hecho, ahora usan tweet el texto del botón de enviar, intentando demostrar que dicha palabra es parte de su [...]

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