Wow. Very awesome. But who uses Twitter on the web?
blogoreader
· 3 months ago
such people will be more now, I guess
Matthew Lowery
· 3 months ago
this.
Raúl Colón-Scarano
· 3 months ago
People who, like me, sometimes tweet so often that the API calls are eaten up quite quickly. Or people who, again like me, want real-time conversations, not having to wait 3-5 minutes for tweets to show up.
dangrossman
· 3 months ago
That'd be why they said API too.
redwall_hp
· 3 months ago
It doesn't matter if you use the website or not. This is an API addition, which means desktop clients will support it as well, eventually.
rrchapman
· 3 months ago
Me, when not using Twitterberry.
Eric Fan
· 3 months ago
me
Hercules K
· 3 months ago
i do, and probably a very significant margin! it's great that they added this.
people like me who dont have an web-connected mobile phone.
blogoreader
· 3 months ago
Nice) I expected that for a long time.
Peter Hodge
· 3 months ago
This is great news. Are there other functions which are to be supported too, or is it just the Retweets?
S.K.
· 3 months ago
I do. But only because I currently don't have access to my usual phone service.
r0cketman22
· 3 months ago
I've been using HootSuite lately. 2.0 is pretty cool.
Mike Stenger
· 3 months ago
And now they roll out with it. Still, really cool feature. Too bad a lot of people use clients and apps so this feature may go unused for some.
rupl
· 3 months ago
This capability will most likely be used by all third-party apps, since merely reposting a tweet with "RT @user" at the beginning will be less useful compared to a RT made via API call.
Currently, all retweets are text copies of the original tweet, with the username thrown in as a courtesy. There is no explicit link between the original tweet and the retweet. Sure, a couple analytics programs can parse all of the text on twitter and find implicit links between similar tweets, but allowing RTs to be made with an API call will leave an permanent trail from the original poster to the entire pyramid of RTs that happen, no matter how many users pass the tweet along.
It's the same idea behind "in reply to" on replies. Remember when a reply used to link to the wrong tweet? Then one day they suddenly were able to link to the correct tweet. This is the same kind of thing.
The fact that you can do one-click RTs in third party apps means nothing. This is not a user interface enhancement, it is primarily an "under the hood" improvement that will allow a whole world of new possibilities in terms of tracking your content as it spreads across Twitter.
Mike Stenger
· 3 months ago
Got it! Big ups to you man for understanding it to this level. Thanks for that, makes a lot of sense now ;-)
Leary
· 3 months ago
Very nice work Twitter, but yeah like Brandon said.. who actually uses twitter.com to tweet?
Avik Nandy
· 3 months ago
Nice, but kind of underwhelming too - yay, the website finally works almost like my 3rd party twitter app does...I feel like Twitter is actually coming into this realization a bit later than expected...But hey, it's good that it'll be part of the API soon, regardless.
pimpybra
· 3 months ago
I didn't see anything if you want to add a note at the end of your retweet?
sebastian
· 3 months ago
Twitter vs Facebook is seizing the competition and creates great improvements on both ends!
rahul
· 3 months ago
nice feature :)
sally evanz
· 3 months ago
what happens if you partially retweet, as people often do for god reasons?
luca filigheddu
· 3 months ago
This is a great news and I love the fact that we will finally remove the "RT" prefix :-)
nsyll
· 3 months ago
we still waiting threads
John LoFranco
· 3 months ago
The new feature is neat, but I personally will usually only partially ReTweet, for example, I will write a little something different, but share the same link. One thing I really like about Twitter is that it is simple, but they don't try to overly-simplify it, which they seem to be doing here. I can be easily swayed though, I will just have to try it and see how I like it! Michelle Chun-Hoon CKR Interactive Intern CKRInteractive.com
Terri
· 3 months ago
SWEET!!!!!
Bryan Lagos
· 3 months ago
I have been waiting for a RT option on Twitter's Timeline
Zahid Lilani
· 3 months ago
Finally... its about time. Hootsuite is good and everything else is also good along the same lines but I feel better on Twitter.com. As far as I know, none of the twitter clients allow you to see the follower list.
Bob Starr
· 3 months ago
This will be awesome when it's rolled out as I find myself using the web interface more and more lately. Great news!
lindano
· 3 months ago
Its good news for all Twitter users,a lot don't re tweet now, but with this added innovation it will be more interesting,&easay to apply, especially for new accounts, &may possibly stop some of the twitter Quitters leaving.Get it up & running ASAP. Yours Lyndon Sullivan, @lindano on Twitter.
trushotsphotography
· 3 months ago
I needed this badly like back in April/May, before I had tweetdeck.
Mary Winkenwerder
· 3 months ago
Great feature!
Tim Wood
· 3 months ago
There has to be an option to edit the RT down so you can comment within the 140 limit, preferably within a pre-populated edit control pop-up. #projectretweet
rrchapman
· 3 months ago
It appears we won't need to edit down to 140 characters anymore. The RT will be automatic without replying an adding the RT.
rrchapman
· 3 months ago
But what about a retweet available to everyone? This is the reason why many of us add a period before the at sign when doing a retweet. (For example, using .@rrchapman instead of @rrchapman when retweeting one of my messages.)
I suspect a partial fail in this improvement coming on.
Chelsea
· 3 months ago
that's awesome! now you can put more content into something you want retweeted and don't have to allow space for "RT @screen name."
@javig
· 3 months ago
I think is not a good decision to change the way users do retweets now; for instance I retweet and several times I add some text to the RT's. Also, I don't want to force my followers to see other avatars because of my RTs. I think retweets should be as simple as Twitter is, just text.
Regina Collins
· 3 months ago
Thank You!
Bryan Karp
· 3 months ago
Sounds nice, but what happens to the visualization if 30 people RT a message? Are they going to show everyone who RT your message? Or, just if you RT a message and the previous RT'er?
Bryn Morgan
· 3 months ago
Just love the comment "Retweeting is a great example of Twitter teaching us what it wants to be". Evolution is the way forward for new communication methods, Twitter has taught us that so far.
The One True b!X
· 3 months ago
Unfortunately they've both over-thought it and didn't think it through enough. Their "solution" is more database intensive than just coding a way to ape the way people already do it by hand ("RT @username [original tweet text]"), and database traffic isn't what Twitter needs more of, given their stability as it is.
What's more, they fundamentally misconstrue how many people use retweeting -- which is not just to pass along the original tweet but often, if there's room, to comment on it as well. This "solution" renders that impossible.
Much like the asinine "users are too confused by the option to see all replies" debacle, Twitter's only showing that it once again fails to understand how people are actually using their service.
The One True b!X
· 3 months ago
Unfortunately they've both over-thought it and didn't think it through enough. Their "solution" is more database intensive than just coding a way to ape the way people already do it by hand ("RT @username [original tweet text]"), and database traffic isn't what Twitter needs more of, given their stability as it is.
What's more, they fundamentally misconstrue how many people use retweeting -- which is not just to pass along the original tweet but often, if there's room, to comment on it as well. This "solution" renders that impossible.
Much like the asinine "users are too confused by the option to see all replies" debacle, Twitter's only showing that it once again fails to understand how people are actually using their service.
heidimiller
· 3 months ago
It's about damn time!
Pliggs
· 3 months ago
Finally a ReTweet button for the web version.
Ben Novakovic
· 3 months ago
I agree this is a great feature and its nice that Twitter has finally adopted it - but what happens if you want to value add to the tweet with your own text? It appears as though you can't do this on these mock-ups? I find that adding something to a retweet is much more interesting that just relaying information.
Silencio Barnes
· 3 months ago
"Retweeting is a great example of Twitter teaching us what it wants to be." - for some reason, I found that a very eloquent statement:)
A very much needed feature. Glad to finally see it appear.
Social Media SEO
· 3 months ago
Twitter - Retweeeting - following streams of conversations will always be Twitters weak spot vs. Facebook's ability to comment, add media, etc... in streams.
If Twitter expects to survive and compete against a flurry of Facebook / Google udpates and progression to making conversation and sharing info as efficient as possible, then Twitter needs to add "comment" functionality right in the Twitter stream.
So what's my point?
Twitter needs to add commenting to the stream - PERIOD!
If they don't - they will eventually become nothing more than a source of spam broadcasts!
MARK MY WORDS.... mark my words!
alexandroid11
· 3 months ago
I have a question. If you wanted to comment on that before reposting it, is that possible? Like currently, say I found a tweet by like this: "@bob: I like pie", I would tweet "Me too. RT @bob: I like pie." Is that...possible to do with this?
jenniferjames
· 3 months ago
I love this and have been hoping that Twitter would officially incorporate retweeting for a long time.
Ted Thibodeau Jr
· 3 months ago
You know, if the Twitter team actually *used* Twitter, or consulted with power users, they'd stop doing things like this that break usability in major ways.
"One click retweet" means I cannot edit the original at all -- no adding my commentary, no changing a passed URL to a bit.ly link that shows how many times *my* followers click it, no changes at all.
@Replies are *still* broken, so threaded conversation doesn't work as it *should* with post-reply-reply-reply -- they have to be post-post-post-post to be seen by people who don't follow us both.
What will Twitter break next? Leaving power users straining at the bit, waiting for the NEW site/tool/what-have-you that delivers *something* of what the old Usenet did... even if that's still a pale, pale shadow of the original... which at least includes the CONVERSATION which is the core of ALL social network sites/tools/what-have-you.
It's sad. Twitter *was* horrible and stupid, and yet delivered value. It's becoming horrible and stupid and *lacking* value. Sad, indeed.
@SteveKesh
· 3 months ago
Nice! I've actually been using the "Seesmic" desktop Twitter app and one of the features I've enjoyed most about it is being able to Retweet like this.
Aadil Pitafi
· 3 months ago
That's gonna be cool!
zafarali
· 3 months ago
nice.
Laurel Papworth
· 3 months ago
Twitter is a great distribution social network already and the retweet is powerful. But FFFF is better than FFF - Find, Filter, FINESSE (or comment) and Forward. Missing the personal note is missing a fundamental part of the retweet. Even if it's just an "Awesome Post" or "Too Funny!" or "is this true?"... ReThink the ReTweet. Please.
lukaswrites.com
· 3 months ago
that's great ! twitter is the best !
ssaadahmed
· 3 months ago
Hightime. Always thought that RT ought to be a standard native feature
Steve
· 3 months ago
Great Article on the Retweet project. Let me share a website of that you can have a user base of Twitter users retweet your messages and earn free credits. It is called reTweet.it You can then take your free credits and get your own messages retweeted. There is also an option for people that do not want to wait to earn retweets to just pay for the user community to review their tweets and if they want to send or retweet the message to their followers they can. Usually only the best tweets get retweeted. This is a powerful promotion tool for those on Twitter.
Rebecca Gill
· 3 months ago
Very happy to see Twitter continuing to expand functionality and attempt to offset the Facebook Lite news so prevalent lately. Since I am one of the FEW who to use Twitter online, I will be using the feature.
All Comments
Currently, all retweets are text copies of the original tweet, with the username thrown in as a courtesy. There is no explicit link between the original tweet and the retweet. Sure, a couple analytics programs can parse all of the text on twitter and find implicit links between similar tweets, but allowing RTs to be made with an API call will leave an permanent trail from the original poster to the entire pyramid of RTs that happen, no matter how many users pass the tweet along.
It's the same idea behind "in reply to" on replies. Remember when a reply used to link to the wrong tweet? Then one day they suddenly were able to link to the correct tweet. This is the same kind of thing.
The fact that you can do one-click RTs in third party apps means nothing. This is not a user interface enhancement, it is primarily an "under the hood" improvement that will allow a whole world of new possibilities in terms of tracking your content as it spreads across Twitter.
Michelle Chun-Hoon
CKR Interactive Intern
CKRInteractive.com
I suspect a partial fail in this improvement coming on.
What's more, they fundamentally misconstrue how many people use retweeting -- which is not just to pass along the original tweet but often, if there's room, to comment on it as well. This "solution" renders that impossible.
Much like the asinine "users are too confused by the option to see all replies" debacle, Twitter's only showing that it once again fails to understand how people are actually using their service.
What's more, they fundamentally misconstrue how many people use retweeting -- which is not just to pass along the original tweet but often, if there's room, to comment on it as well. This "solution" renders that impossible.
Much like the asinine "users are too confused by the option to see all replies" debacle, Twitter's only showing that it once again fails to understand how people are actually using their service.
http://twitter.com/silenciobarnes
http://silenciobarnes.com
If Twitter expects to survive and compete against a flurry of Facebook / Google udpates and progression to making conversation and sharing info as efficient as possible, then Twitter needs to add "comment" functionality right in the Twitter stream.
So what's my point?
Twitter needs to add commenting to the stream - PERIOD!
If they don't - they will eventually become nothing more than a source of spam broadcasts!
MARK MY WORDS.... mark my words!
Like currently, say I found a tweet by like this: "@bob: I like pie", I would tweet "Me too. RT @bob: I like pie."
Is that...possible to do with this?
"One click retweet" means I cannot edit the original at all -- no adding my commentary, no changing a passed URL to a bit.ly link that shows how many times *my* followers click it, no changes at all.
@Replies are *still* broken, so threaded conversation doesn't work as it *should* with post-reply-reply-reply -- they have to be post-post-post-post to be seen by people who don't follow us both.
What will Twitter break next? Leaving power users straining at the bit, waiting for the NEW site/tool/what-have-you that delivers *something* of what the old Usenet did... even if that's still a pale, pale shadow of the original... which at least includes the CONVERSATION which is the core of ALL social network sites/tools/what-have-you.
It's sad. Twitter *was* horrible and stupid, and yet delivered value. It's becoming horrible and stupid and *lacking* value. Sad, indeed.
ReThink the ReTweet. Please.
You can then take your free credits and get your own messages retweeted. There is also an option for people that do not want to wait to earn retweets to just pay for the user community to review their tweets and if they want to send or retweet the message to their followers they can.
Usually only the best tweets get retweeted. This is a powerful promotion tool for those on Twitter.