Hey, check me out! I’m writing a blog post on the correct usage of Twitter! This is because I not only want to make myself look self-important and arrogant, I also want to make myself 87% more unattractive!
But no, this one is sort of important because it ties in to reputation and trust and all that stuff which powers the social Internet whether we like it or not.
Here’s a tweet:
bob: An amusing and / or interesting thing
Sally agrees that this is not only amusing but also interesting and wishes to share it with her followers, so she hits the re-tweet button in her Twitter app of choice. (Like most cool things about Twitter you can’t do this from the Twitter website. This is because Twitter is not a website. It’s an open database with a somewhat mediocre website tacked on. If you’ve only ever used the website and think Twitter is fine but not all that this is why. But I digress. Back to Sally’s re-tweet)
sally: rt @bob: An amusing and / or interesting thing
John is following Sally and agrees with her. He does the retweeting thang too:
john: rt @sally: rt @bob: An amusing and / or interesting thing
And so does Janet:
janet: rt @john: rt @sally: rt @bob: An amusing and / or interesting thing
And now it’s getting a bit long. Let’s say for the same of argument it’s pretty much 140 characters, the Twitter limit. When Henry sees this he has to make a decision. Editing must be done. So he posts this:
henry: rt @janet: An amusing and / or interesting thing
Err-urr! Y’see what he’s done here? He’s credited Bob’s witty thing to Janet when all Janet did was pass it on. Bob gets not credit. Janet gets an undeserved credit.
Now that’s not really a problem, but what if it wasn’t just a joke but an opinion? What if by retweeting all Janet was saying was “look over here and what Bob said. I might not agree with him but, golly!” This has not been turned into “I’m Janet and I think this.”
And so on.
Retweeting might look like a chorus of “me too” echoing around the echo chamber but it ain’t necessarily so. it’s more analogous to quoting or linking to something of interest. Here’s an example with the name removed because they’re not the first and they won’t be the last:
I didn’t say that. What I actually said was this:
Now, I support the message and want it spread around but the top one implies that I might have had the idea or be involved in organising the gathering. Sure, I’m going to try and make it but I’m by no means a contact. Rich, on the other hand, has been campaigning on this issue for ages. Folk should be directed to him, or at least be aware that he’s at the middle of this.
Credit is important in this game but it’s not just about vanity. It affect the message and its effectiveness.
And I would never sign my tweets with Xx. That’s Rich’s thing and he’s welcome to it. ;)
I’m sure there are lots of people that aren’t quite sure what “RT” (or somesuch) means. Which manifests itself in responses to you when all you’ve done is pass on a request from someone else. Likewise with hashtags, as they aren’t part of the standard “Twitter package” and never really get explained.
I had an incoherent attempt at this a few months ago http://thebounder.co.uk/blog/583/chinese-twispers/ – it’ll only take a “celebrity” retweet in a situation like the one you describe above – combined with the ignorance of the press – to cause someone a load of hassle.
Oo yeah for some reason it really winds me up if I retweet, say, a request for info from someone I’m following and then someone who’s following me gives me the info instead of giving straight to the person who wants it. I’m not a bloomin’ secretary!
Also, it would be great if Twitter could evolve to not count usernames and other metadata in the 140 character limit. That would solve quite a few probs methinks.
Annoys me 2 death, when you’re trying to RT a really good Tweet. The time faffing to get it down 140. U don’t want to be impolite by removing the RTers, using …. May loose the thread. Then it’s whether your hashed RT makes sense. 140 characters for the message alone would be sooooo good
How about “RT” vs “via”, which seem to be used interchangably at the moment.
To my mind, if you are directly quoting the original Tweet you should use “RT”, which makes it clear that the words are not your own.
If you're simply re-posting an interesting link or picture with your own commentry you should use “Via” crediting the original person with the posting of the link but indicating that it's not a direct quote.
That's about right. RT is like forwarding an email. via comes from link-blogging – see Waxy as an example: http://waxy.org/links/
I agree entirely BUT not all website RT tools follow the protocol. I recently RTed a tweet on Twitteriffic and was rightly ticked off by it's author (@charlesarthur as it happens) for crediting the remark to him rather than the original tweeter. I had no recollection of editing this out. Next time I retweeted a retweet(!) I was especially carefully and noticed that Twitteriffic had dropped the second name on the list, the tweeter who had made the original comment. I had to manually re-add it. Teaching people to use the protocol is good of course and this guide is helpful and clear, but how do we make sure the Twit clients follow it too?
That is annoying, but I guess it's a tradeoff. If we want this stuff to evolve we need to allow experiments and for things to go wrong. It'll eventually settle into some kind of standard and even if it's the “wrong” standard it'll be okay because it's the standard. In the meanwhile we deal with the mess because it still works.
See also, http://peteashton.com/twitter.html
TBH it's not doing it now so maybe it was a bug that's been fixed.
Nope, it's doing it again. Will send it your guide!