Project Retweet: Full News Coverage

For the early adopters, they would probably remember how it was like before @replies was conceived. There wasn’t a proper way to reply to “what you are doing” tweets. Twitter expected you to tell people what you just ate for brunch without wanting a response.

But the tweeple wanted more interaction and started putting an “@” in front of the username they were responding to, followed by the message.

Just when Twitter has integrated @replies into the Twittersphere, another convention came up: Retweeting.

Third party apps started supporting the retweeting feature quite some time ago but the Twitter site only caught on now. They call it Project Retweet, which is in its first phase and expected to arrive in a few weeks.

What exactly is Project Retweet?

For the benefit of those who are a stranger to retweeting, it is basically a simple way to share interesting tweets by other tweeple. Most people share by copying and pasting the originator’s tweet and username before adding “RT” in front. Here’s an example:

This is an informal way of retweeting, which is created by Twitter users. However, copying and pasting the original message can be quite a pain. Third party desktop apps tried to make things easier by incorporating “reposting”, which works the same as retweeting; and creating retweet widgets for users to include in their sites. With all that, I guess it’s pretty much time for Twitter to make retweeting a formal and convenient practice.

According to Biz Stone, Twitter’s Cofounder:

“Retweeting is a great example of Twitter teaching us what it wants to be. The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact and the more efficient dissemination of information across the entire Twitter ecosystem is something we very much want to support. That’s why we’re planning to formalize retweeting by officially adding it to our platform and Twitter.com.”

And here’s his simple sketch of what it would be like:

Note “retweeted by” attribution and “retweet” option.

This would mean that you would never see “@” or ”RT” in retweets again. What’s more, you would also see all retweets by people you follow no matter if you are following the originator of the retweet or not. If you are not interested in those retweets, you could always turn them off.

Here’s a draft of what to expect!

Retweets would be consumed in 4 ways: