I am trying to add just a simple Twitter icon that will make the user share the link to his/her twitter account. I am seeing there are 2 ways to do this:
Simple Tweet button on the page. As in: http://dev.twitter.com/pages/tweet_button
or, The more complicated way, going through oauth process and call the API to update the user's status. As in: http://dev.twitter.com/doc/post/statuses/update
Seems to me if we go with the authenticated process, I actually need to register an app with Twitter, whereas if I just use the Tweet button, it's very simple to embed the necessary tags to your site.
What's the advantages / disadvantages from going from one way or the other? The only thing I found so far is the rate-limit factor (150/hr if not authenticated, 350/hr if authenticated)?
Some applications that use Twitter are automated, or not submitted by a person. In these cases, there's no way to make use of a "tweet button", or any kind of button. In cases where it is indeed a person submitting the tweet, using the button will significantly simplify the process.