Image by pasukaru76
Welcome back to the weekly Twitter column. This week I want to speak about a new development in the Twitter retweet wars. In the first episode we have seen a massive rebellion against the new retweet functionality introduced by Twitter itself. A huge wave of resistance has forced Twitter and most third party Twitter clients to ensure support for the old school retweet with the added “RT” or “RT:”. This week we witnessed a new chapter of the retweet wars.
The evil Twitter empire has attacked the rebel forces by removing traditional retweets from Twitter search.
Both searches from the search box and by clicking on popular hashtags on the frontpage have been robbed of the “RT” containing retweets. Only retweets posted using the built in Twitter retweet feature were accepted in search results.
The imperial headquarters justified this hideous attack by stating that RT retweets do not add any value and only clog the search results. Obviously the only meant retweets they don’t approve of. Those retweets that use the popular “RT” method Twitter frowns upon.
The rebel forces were quick to regroup and soon brave bloggers and Twitter users swarmed to attack the imperial clones.
Yes, I said clones. Twitter retweets are just clones. The retweet looks exactly the same as the original tweet but the sender is somebody else. You can’t even edit it when retweeting. So no comment or other addition is possible. The rebels launched many RT retweets and soon the imperial attack has been repelled.
What I don’t understand is why use the old-style retweets if you’re not _adding_ something to the tweet? The new-style RT does old-style no-change RTs better–that’s what they are.
If you old-style RT something and ADD to it, then of course the new-style RT is not what you need. But in that case, I doubt twitter blocks it, because it’s NOT a clone.
But I like your analogy and the lego-pic anyway. :)
hmmm… young jedi you are wrong in this co-tweet allows for both RT and quote/via RT mode which should get around this evil play to refine the Twitter search results…
Exciting post!
Kaolin: Good question! I add somnething to a RT in most cases! Also it’s very important to credit each of the people you have retweeted. This way you get new followers interested in your area of expertise.
David: Yes, the force is strong in CoTweet! Some of the wisest Twitter jedi use it.
Andrew: Thanks for the feedback!
It’s important that tweets have an originating id as plagiarism is already wild across the net
Hey Tad Chef, you say there are clients which still do the old school, could you list some of them? I’m having a hard time finding them, most of the idiot programmers refuse to implement it as an option. Seesmic doesn’t have it, tweetdeck doesn’t have it etc.
I hate that new system, not for sending but for receiving – I want to see the icon of the person who is doing the tweeting, not of some stranger being retweeted.
What I don’t understand is why use the old-style retweets if you’re not _adding_ something to the tweet? The new-style RT does old-style no-change RTs better–that’s what they are.
If you old-style RT something and ADD to it, then of course the new-style RT is not what you need. But in that case, I doubt twitter blocks it, because it’s NOT a clone.
But I like your analogy and the lego-pic anyway. :)