Project Retweet is set to roll out, and it's gonna be ugly.
In the next few weeks, Twitter will add a streamlined retweet function that you can click on, as when you reply to a tweet. You just click a button and the retweet is added to your stream, and your icon is added to a little gallery of other people who've retweeted it. (See the mockup provided by Twitter, above.)
The really bad news: You can't add a comment to a retweet -- and the commentary of why you're retweeting something has been a major part of Twitter's group conversation.
The new retweet will be strictly a thumbs-up, like clicking "Like" on Facebook.
Twitter has always been snarkier and more opinionated than Facebook. Retweets are a way of furthering the conversation by adding your thoughts. When you pass something along, you like to say why you're passing it along. You might even be retweeting to argue against the tweet, or to differ on part of it.
Sorry, Twitter: I'm not clicking Like. (You can manually retweet the old way, of course.)
Claire Cain Miller of The New York Times missed this point in a story today mentioning Project Retweet. In a glowing company profile, the NYT stressed how much Twitter lets users guide development. But there has already been significant discussion on Twitter about what a fundamental misunderstanding of Twitter's user interface this is.
The good news? You can now retweet longer tweets, because you don't have to add the RT and name of the tweeter. And you can't fake retweet someone, by making it look as though someone else said something ridiculous, and you're just passing this along.
(Although I have seen that done with hilarious results.)
Will this also affect the way that you retweet using other platforms, like Twhirl, Seesmic, UberTwitter, etc., or just when you do it from the Web site?
ReplyDeleteSeriously, who visits twitter.com to tweet anymore? I'd use Tweetdeck from your desktop, which still allows for RT comments and is generally the best way to update Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and everything else around.
ReplyDeleteI think the argument for this method is that 140 characters didn't allow for enough space to commentary. With the "Like" method, the retweet is just an attribute of the original tweet and a citation to it in your own stream.
ReplyDeleteGiven that you could not retweet a person with a long username and long message was problematic; you can't fit any commentary. We just felt awesome in circumventing it using abbrevs. Twitter as a moderating force decided to place value on new tweets -- a new signal without redundancy -- for each new piece of commentary. Sounds like a good idea to me! We'll adjust.
I'm confused.
ReplyDeleteno :-), but Dave is right - I only venture onto Twitter to delete stuff.
lame!
@Dave According to twitstat web (twitter.com) is still the most used api (21.72%) followed by tweetdeck (13.74%). I'm a Brizzly fan. (Stats labeled oct 27th)
ReplyDeletetwitstat.com clients
So basically 80% shouldn't notice a difference until dev's choose to use the new retweet api's.
That leaves 1: 5 assuming that last 20% uses twitter.com (web) for RT's. (which unless I missed something, the web client had only a reply and a fav button and u basically did a cut/paste prepending RT.)
The question I have is how the retweet api handles / recognizes / groups the manual vs auto-RT's.
I.E.
user1 - orig tweeter
users 2 - 50 follow user1 and auto-RT
user51 follows user1 and manually RT's with comment
you - are an auto-following desperate who follows all of the above (for simplicity sake, I'm not here to judge :)
user1 - I Like Spam
users '2-50' RT @user1 I Like Spam
user51 RT @user1 I Like Spam @spam WTH? Nice BOT
Now, what would u see?
user1 - I Like Spam
1.) retweeted by user2 and 48 others ...
or
2.) retweeted by user2 and 47 others ...
user51 - RT @user1 I Like Spam @spam WTH? Nice BOT
Use-case 1 loses the value of user51's augmenting comment unless they expand and view all RT's
Use-case 2 pollutes the 'stream' with a pebble in the middle of nowhere.
Maybe something completely different happens?
I'm kinda curious at this point.
- My 2 cents
@Adarro
Dave: I still use the site, although augmented by PowerTwitter (which, yes, I know... has it's issues).
ReplyDeleteI'm with Peter up there: this new function most likely will not be used for basic RTing. We'll use it when a) we really do just want to "Like" something and b) when a tweet is just too damn long to RT.
The only concern I have is whether or not it will affect other platforms and addons.
This system they've come up with is a good way to clear out a lot of the noise from twitter - people who just RT other people without adding any commentary.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if social-climber twitter users who want to claw their way into the limelight by parroting the tweets of 'celeb' twitterers might not like the new system, as they may only show up as a small profile picture rather than as a tweet in search results.
For those who want to add commentary, there's always RT Classic(tm).
Since the "old" way of retweeting isn't going anywhere, this seems more like a new feature and less like a replacement of something old. All in all, it sounds like a good thing...
ReplyDelete