One of the more interesting aspects of Twitter is the ReTweet (aka RT), which involves forwarding a tweet to your users that you find interesting. In some ways, it’s Twitter-lite or Twitter-lazy because it means you can simply and quickly do a RT, rather than spend the time to pound out a 140 character (or less) message.
What Twitter has realized is that RTs are an important part of the Twitter ecosystem, and that a key part of what makes RTs valuable is providing context. This means Twitter will show an entire conversation so you can understand who’s said what, when. As well, it is introducing a new RT API.
Biz Stone provides more insight about what’s involved in Twitter’s new approach to the RT on Twitter’s blog.
“Retweeting is a great example of Twitter teaching us what it wants to be. The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact and the more efficient dissemination of information across the entire Twitter ecosystem is something we very much want to support,” Stone said. “That’s why we’re planning to formalize retweeting by officially adding it to our platform and Twitter.com.”
For more thoughts, check out Venture Beat and TechCrunch, which suggests Twitter’s new approach could see some major changes in how Twitter works.
One Comment
Thanks for the post!
I've found something even more contextually powerful than the ReTweet. It is the ReTip feature found on the TipTop search enginge feeltiptop.com. TipTop's ReTip looks like this:
@duncano I like your top "markevans" tip http://bit.ly/PqD4G in TipTop at http://bit.ly/ioLs0 Share: http://bit.ly/lJUj7A
Link to the markevans Tweet: http://bit.ly/PqD4G
Link to the markevans Search Result: http://bit.ly/ioLs0
Link to Share this message: http://bit.ly/lJUj7A
Cheers, Greg