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Retweets and Retweets: Knowing the Difference

Twitter’s roll out of built-in retweet functionality rubbed more than one user the wrong way when it laid claim to the term “retweet” itself, a community-crafted word that had a very specific use.

Meaning for one user to post a tweet originaly posted by another, with additional tags, thoughts or credits included as the retweeter wished, the word has been used widely since at least 2008. From mid-2011 on, the word has taken on a new meaning with Twitter’s official retweet functionality, now meaning to click a built-in button when you want to share a user’s post.

Confused?

Because they use the same moniker and do the same thing in essence, the conflicting methods of retweeting have lead to confusion among users as to which is best in a given situation.

Traditional retweets enable you to:

  • Be found. Traditional, manual retweets are given their own status page, meaning that users can find the content within by using Twitter’s search function.
  • Be edited. Adding content like hashtags and opinions is a major part of retweeting and the older method allows this with no limitations.
  • Be credited to multiple users. Sometimes one person doesn’t deserve all of the credit for the message or content delivered in a tweet; the traditional retweet method allows you to credit as many users as you like.

Official retweets enable you to:

  • Give your retweets an official look. Because the new method shows only the original source and is marked even more clearly as a retweet, it gives users confidence that what they’re seeing was retweeted because of its value, not in order to spam.

The Twitter RT versus Retweets infographic is placed through MyBlogGuest Infographics Gallery.

Posted in Social Networking. Tags: , , ,

3 Replies

  1. I love retweeting intelligent, funny and useful things – news, quotes, etc. It’s nice to share the experiences- retweeting can do wonders in interacting with friends and family. For personal use, retweets can reveal your interests for businesses affiliates.

  2. Proper social media tactics are the key to making a truly successful marketing.

  3. Great share , i am clear about the Retweeting , whatever we do we must be clear and confident in it , this would definitely guide us to success path


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