Old style retweet

If you’re new to Twitter you may know be familiar with the concept of “old style retweets” (now often referred to as “retweet with comment” vs “new style retweets”. Here’s a quick rundown on the history of the retweet (RT).

When Twitter began there was no retweet built into the service. There was also no way to “like” or forward tweets you want to share. The Twitter community recognized this and immediately started “retweeting” things tweets they like. They wanted to give credit to the author so the idea to let people know they were “retweeting” something someone else had tweeted came about. Since Twitter is 140 characters retweeting got shortened to simply “RT”. Users would simply repost a tweet and put the RT at the front, followed by the original Tweeters @name and their tweet.

This method filled the need and worked well for a while. The problem arises when someone wants to retweet something that someone else has already retweeted. Do you add a second RT? Do you cut out the original RT and use your own? And finally, how can you track these? Sure they show up in your mentions but trying to track the individual tweet by sorting through mentions is cumbersome.

Twitter decided to officially adopt retweets. The new version eliminated the RT and the persons @name in front. Instead Twitter chose to display the original tweet on your timeline, complete with the original Tweeters avatar and all. The only thing that indicates who retweeted is their name followed by a little recycle looking arrow circle or a small version of their avatar overlaid on the corner of the original Tweeters, depending on the Twitter app you’re using. The new style retweet made it easier to track retweets since it was actually forwarding the original tweet and not reposting it.

The Twitter community went up in arms at the time. They claimed it was confusing because people would see tweets from people they weren’t following and it would confuse them. There were also complaints that this new style retweet could be abused to spam peoples timelines. While these were somewhat valid complaints the truth is both “old style” and “new style” retweets can be somewhat abused, and I’m going to tell you how.

Original style retweets take what someone else said and puts your name and avatar on it. New style retweets push someone elses account through your timeline. So deciding which to use comes down to two things: do you want to promote your account or do you want to promote another account?

Lets say you have your personal account and then decide to start a business account. You ask followers to follow it but you just can’t get the community built fast enough. So you decide to tweet from your business account and then retweet it from your personal account. This exposes your business account to people that aren’t following it and the hope is they will click out of curiosity and follow. Or someone that always intended to follow was too lazy to do it, and now it’s easy for them.

Successfully Hijacked Tweet

Now lets say you read a tweet that you believe has viral potential. Maybe you want to steal some thunder from the orignal tweeter and get a slice of the viral wave. Using old style retweets, or “retweet with comment”, allows you to do what I refer to as tweetjacking. The hope is your followers retweet it using the new style or “natural” retweet. This allows you to use someone elses content to get yourself put in front of people that aren’t following you.

I’m not saying there’s not benefits and non abusive ways to use both. I’m just pointing out that both can be used in a spammy way. So while people complained their timelines could get spammed they should have complained adding a new style the creates synergy between the two in relation to spamming. Have you seen any other abuse of retweets I didn’t cover?