On Retweets - Blah Blah Blah
Verbatim Retweet: This is the kind that Twitter’s new feature addresses. It’s when you want to reiterate the exact same point of someone who tweeted ahead of you, or when you want to pass on their point without commentary.
However, there’s also the
Retweet Plus One: This is the kind of Retweet I actually prefer. Sure, sometimes a verbatim retweet is the best. News situations, mostly. However, adding a bit of text to fore or aft, with your own opinion, or own commentary is what keeps retweets interesting and keeps them “fresh.”
Remember: Twitter is mostly a service used by individuals to track less than 100 of their friends. Having the flexibility to add text in front to say, either “This is bullshit!” or “This is awesome!” gives the original twitterer much-needed context. They’re giving you, the original twitterer information.
I like the new, official Twitter version, for a few reasons:
- The internet already lacks accountability, and I think the organic RT makes it too easy to fake an RT to make somebody look bad and/or twist their words to suit your own purposes. While I personally live by a “don’t be an asshole in public” rule many, many people don’t, and many other people never bother to check their sources to see if what is claimed is actually what was said.
- Also on the lack of accountability front, it’s too easy to take credit for something somebody else has said, and/or lose something in the retranslation. If you’re writing something you’d actually like people to retweet, you have to take into account the length of your own handle and leave room for “RT @yourunnecessarilylongusername: ” at the front of it (don’t forget the space after the colon). Otherwise you run the risk that your carefully crafted tweet is going to get mangled or lose its original attribution anyway and, as in the first point, few people check their sources. And once the RTs get retweeted again, all bets are off.
- Honestly, most people aren’t all that clever. Or consistent. Is there one standard format for adding one’s own comments to a retweet? [no] / no // no (no) (via: @foo). [FWIW, I prefer editorial brackets when adding my own comments, but I don’t think I’ve been entirely consistent with them.]
- When it comes down to it, if I follow you I probably already know your point of view. If you retweet something, nineteen times out of twenty I’ll know exactly why without commentary. Your added value doesn’t really add all that much to me. And I’m OK without the option to add my own commentary, because I’m pretty sure my own point of view has already been made clear anyway.
It’s the last point that I think people don’t really consider. Who follows you? How well do they know you? Do you have enough faith in your followers — your friends — that you trust them to know why you find something interesting, even alarming? Or do you think you have to explain everything for them?
If you don’t trust your friends, why are they your friends?
