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One of my biggest annoyances with the new Twitter API has been the migration to the new “retweet” structure where clicking the retweet button pulls the person’s Tweet into your own stream, with the person’s name and profile picture attached to it. The problem with this method is that it is not near as visible, especially on many clients that do not fully support this. Using the old style, “RT @soandso such and such” is a much more effective medium in most cases, and, in my experience, results in many more people sharing and seeing your message. Evidently I’m not alone, as Mike Grace, a developer for Kynetx, wrote his own extension for Firefox and Chrome, which adds a old-style retweet link next to the new-style retweet link, giving you more options in retweeting your friends’ Tweets.

The extension, built on the Kynetx platform, is just one of many useful extensions (including my “like” button extension) intended to bring more functionality, using a single extensions (and event-driven) platform to the sites you browse on the web. According to Grace, “I got really sick of doing the copy and paste dance so I built a Kynetx app that adds the “RT” functionality that I want.”

So, if you’re looking for old-style retweets on top of Twitter.com, head on over to Mike Grace’s blog and download the extension. I think it’s a pretty nifty extension!

Disclaimer: I have no ownership or interest in Kynetx other than I think they’re a really cool, Utah-based, technology startup that gets us much closer to the web with no log in button. Oh, and they have great free lunches they offer to the public on Fridays – you should come!

As part of Kynetx’s Facebook App contest I wrote a simple browser extension that you can install on Chrome, Internet Explorer, or Firefox, which allows you to, in addition to the “retweet”, “favorite”, and “reply” links you see when you mouse over a Tweet, you can also now “like” the Tweet as well. What does this do? It puts it on Facebook, of course! Here’s me liking one of Jolie O’Dell’s Tweets (she had the most like-worthy Tweet in my stream at the time):

The plugin was very simple to write on Kynetx’s platform – Brad Hintze explains it well over here, but to put it simple, all I had to do is distinguish through a selector where to put the like buttons and put Facebook’s default like button iframe code in where each Tweet is. With some simple jQuery I could identify the permalink for the Tweet, insert that as the href for the like button, and voila, each like links right back to the Tweet on Twitter.com. The like shows up in my profile like this:

Of course, there is much more I can do with this – at the moment I’m using Kynetx’s Facebook API to greet you by name and tell you how to use the plugin. I anticipate also enabling a “post to facebook” checkbox below the status update box in Twitter, and because you’ve authorized your Facebook account through Kynetx you can now cross-post to Facebook, straight from Twitter.com. Or, what if I wanted to, in my Twitter settings, pull my profile pic from my Facebook profile and upload that to Twitter as my profile pic? I could use Kynetx’s Facebook API to access the profile picture, then use Kynetx’s Twitter API to upload that pic up to Twitter. Not just that, but all the changes, written in one single language and written only once, get compiled into Chrome plugins, Firefox plugins, Internet Explorer plugins, as well as Information Cards and bookmarklets anyone can install to completely customize the Twitter.com experience to work with Facebook. What are some other ways you can see this extended?

If you haven’t tried out Kynetx yet go check it out. This was very simple to write – you can see the source code I used over on the Kynetx blog. Feel free to add to it and make your own creations – I’ll just release this all under the GPL, so change away. Oh, and if you’re not a developer go install the extension and like your favorite Twitter posts!

I’ve uploaded the extensions for IE, Firefox, and Chrome all to this zip file – feel free to download and enjoy! It’s a work in progress (and mostly a hobby), so please send me your ideas and feedback.

Disclosure: I won a $200 Amazon Gift Certificate for entering this app into Kynetx’s Facebook app contest