Yesterday, Biz Stone announced on the official Twitter blog a new initiative called Project Retweet. Like many Twitter conventions before it, retweeting has become a popular, user-created way to share tweets across tweetstreams. Twitter has decided to integrate retweet functionality into the application itself.
It’s not ready yet. In fact, first was the announcement and the release of a draft API to developers. Twitter wants to get everyone on board and work out kinks. Soon, it will be rolled out to a select number of users, and after testing, a site-wide roll-out.
The biggest difference is in appearance. It’s not a small change – in fact, I think it will take many users a bit to adjust to it. The new feature shows the original tweets in their entirety on the timeline of anyone following the retweeter, whether or not they’re following the original author. I know, that’s confusing.
Let’s say that I’m following @briansolis and you’re not. You are following me, however. If I retweet one of @briansolis’s tweets, you’ll see HIS tweet in your timeline. Underneath that retweet, it will say retweeted by @writetechnology so you’ll know it’s a retweet. Retweeting will be an option you can turn off in your Twitter setting. Here is a screenshot of the entire process.
You may also notice that there is a Retweet section in the sidebar. I’m not clear on whether that displays what I’ve retweeted, or my own tweets that got retweeted. Regardless, this is a fundamental difference in how Twitter operates.
The retweeting will include
- Hovering over a tweet will give you options of Retweet or Reply
- Retweeted items appear as original tweets followed by a small link (Retweeted by @writetechnology)
I’m not completely sold on how this operates yet. Perhaps it’s because applications such as Seesmic and Tweetdeck have such simple ways to retweet. I sort of feel like Twitter is overcomplicating something easy. Sure, I don’t want to have to cut and paste to retweet, like I do on Twitter.com, but I don’t have to do that in most of the third-party applications out there. The apps do it for me.
Additionally, this method of retweeting disallows the ability to comment directly within the retweet. Sure, you don’t get to comment much, but you can still make some sort of commentary.
What are your thoughts on the potential retweeting changes coming to Twitter? How do you think this will affect third-party developers, many whom already integrate a different method of retweeting?
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Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.