The 61px Standard

The TweetMeme button is one of the most successful social media buttons, it is served to millions of websites around the web. One of the more unusual points about the TweetMeme button is it’s height, 61px. This height has now been adopted by facebook and digg.

Why 61px?

“Cause everyone knows that 61 pixels is such a normal dimension in the world of social networking – I mean everything’s 61 pixels, right? Cause it’s…a prime number!”

- Twittown

I would like to say that it was due to lots of research and investigation, but it was more of a accident. The button was originally designed to be 60px high but in the quest to fit an extra digit onto the button the font size was decreased and the button height was increased to 61px.

The Standard

The TweetMeme button had a massive adoption rate, and was installed on millions of sites across the web therefore it became the one to beat! Large sites have now put pressure on the other social media sites to produce their buttons to the new standard. Therefore the 61px standard (if you have a better name let me know) is now the default for all social media buttons on the internet.