Booksquare University

This week has seen debate on, of all thing, the retweet. It turns out there are those in favor to of the action, those who oppose it, and those who think “Hey, why isn’t that part of the Twitter system?”. Let’s explore some of the good reasons (and bad reasons) for all perspectives.

First, the retweet (abbreviated RT) is not part of the official Twitter protocol. It is a social convention developed by Twitter users, and it’s become such an important part of the culture that most third party applications include buttons/controls to make it easy to retweet. At its most basic, retweeting is the simple act of forwarding someone else’s tweet, verbatim and with attribution, to your follower list.

Example:

RT: @booksquare: is it wrong that my kitten is a caffeine addict? (sent to her followers by JenSchaller)

If you’re going through the Twitter website, the act of retweeting involves copying and pasting the comment into the text box and prepending “RT” or “Retweet” (more characters for the latter) and sending it to the world. Simple as can be, and even more simple if you use an application like Twhirl, which makes this happen with the click of a button.

So why do people retweet? First, of course, to pass on interesting comments from people they follow. Second (and don’t discount this!), it’s easier than composting your own 140 character tweet. Third — and I do this a lot — to confer status and draw attention to the people I follow in hopes that my followers will find them as fantastic as I do. Retweeting links is part of my mix, and it gives credit to the person who wrote the post or found the cool link.

This credit is social capital. In the Twitter world, sharing is part of the social contract, and retweeting is a great way to share. So what can possibly be controversial about that?

Well, I don’t think that the people who oppose retweeting object to the practice in principle — it’s more of an objection to information overload. Even those with a relatively short following lists can quickly become overcome on high volume news days. And I’ll be frank: there’s nothing more annoying that fifteen, twenty, more retweets of the same information (one friend laughed because something she’d said was retweeted so much, it came back around to her, original attribution completely lost).

I have established a rule for myself when it comes to retweets: if the original post comes from someone I know is followed by many of the same people who follow me (and you’ll know, trust me!), then I don’t retweet. Unless it’s big news that I want to make sure gets to as many of my followers as possible.

Since retweeting information is easy (oh so easy), I force myself to exercise restraint. If it’s a story I feel I must add my two cents to, then I will add my own spin to the story, compose a new tweet, add the link (generally it’s a link in this situation), and post with a via attribution (example: via @booksquare).

Yeah, I am big on giving credit where credit is due because it generates good will, and I’d appreciate the same treatment if it’s something I sent out into the world. Think of attribution as a form of Twitter karma: you get what you give.

Finally, Dave Winer, a pioneer of social media, posted a piece called “Retweet is Stupid” that raised some hackles. For my money, most of the reaction was to the post’s title, not the message. Winer wasn’t objecting to the act of retweeting, he was commenting upon the fact that there is no inherent metadata in the action. Winer compared the act of retweeting to “liking” something or voting an item up or down. These latter acts create a system of popularity when it comes to tweets, and, to be honest, that sort of status can be seductive.