Retweeting and You: a guide to who said what on Twitter

For those of you who don't know, Twitter is a microblogging platform for sharing just about anything in a very digestable 140 characters or less.

Sometimes you will hear something profound and you want to share it with everyone who follows you on twitter in case they don't follow the same profound twitter users that you do. Enter the Retweet.

Retweet = twitter slang for Repeat.

You are simply repeating what someone else is saying.

There are three popular ways to retweet:

1. Click the Retweet Link on twitter.com

When viewing your twitter account on twitter.com you can see all of the updates from people you follow. When you see something interesting that you want to simply repeat to all of your followers, hover your mouse over the tweet and a "Retweet" link will be available.

Immediately the tweet goes out to your followers and they see the originator's name and profile photo along with an icon to make sure they know it was retweeted. (it also shows that you are the one who retweeted it)

2. Manual RT (quoting)

When viewing your twitter account, if you see something awesome and you want to add a short comment, just copy the tweet, and type "RT: @{username} {original tweet} //{comments}"

For example: on November 26, 2010 @RickWarren said:

"Theology should determine your morality,not vice-versa. If u get it backwards you create a false God who excuses your sin."

So my tweet might be:

"RT @RickWarren Theology shld dtermine your morality,not vice-versa If u get it bkwrds you create a false God who excuses your sin. //Amen!"

Notice three things there:

1. I had to shorten some words to fit,

2. I got to add my own comment. in this instance, not so insightful,

3. I could fake this and pretend @RickWarren said anything and there would be no way to verify authenticity. The Retweet button on twitter enforces authenticity by having the servers (which won't lie until after they overthrow humanity) retweet the message instead of being manipulated by a human first.

3. Via (the no-holds-barred retweet)

The via is a weird and often misused tool. It basically says "this concept came from this guy" -or- "this phrase came from a resource not on twitter".

For example, if I'm in a meeting and my non-tweeting boss exclaims "I love how high-tech these new fax machines are!" I might tweet: "I love how high-tech these new fax machines are! //via my boss who orders us the phone book on CD to seem current with technology"

Or I might write "You will get an even better fortune the next time you eat here //via the most awesome fortune cookie ever" if the resource is not a person.

Sometimes people use it for twitter users in place of option 1 or 2... such as:

"Theology should determine your morality,not vice-versa. If u get it backwards you create a false God who excuses your sin. //via @RickWarren"

Some things to note:

1. it is ALWAYS longer to end a tweet with //via @username than to simply write RT: @username before the tweet.

2. it is confusing where your own comments/replies go

3. it looks like you are saying something, rather than someone else... letting people know at the beginning of the tweet who first said it helps put the tweet in context.

4. I don't like this method unless I'm retweeting fortune cookies, the elderly, or 18th century technology such as the modern cotton gin or fax machines.

A quick test:

On November 4th I (@oneseventeen) wrote:

RT @ckehayias: Just in case any missed the news! We are having a baby girl sometime late March! //Awesome!

Question:

Who do you think is having a baby girl?

Answer:

@ckehayias is having a baby girl.

He announced it on twitter on November 4th by saying: "Just in case any missed the news! We are having a baby girl sometime late March!"

I was excited for him, and wanted to offer him congratulations while spreading the word. So I chose option 2 from above, the quoted retweet, then I added the comment "Awesome!" at the end by placing two forward-slashes then my comment.

See the resemblance?

RT @{username} {original tweet} //{my comment}

RT @ckehayias: Just in case any missed the news! We are having a baby girl sometime late March! //Awesome!