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