Scripting News - Latest Comments in Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

Peter Coryat — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 10:56:11 -0000

agree

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

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Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

Dave — Wed, 13 May 2009 10:56:15 -0000

When I'm using Twhirl or other third party Twitter clients the current retweet functionality works well because it shows me the tweet being retweeted. If it was 'liked' then I'd probably need to click to see the original tweet. I realize that it's just one click but why add that level of annoyance? (Not criticizing. Just talking.)

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

tojosan — Mon, 04 May 2009 08:18:18 -0000

I'm with you on this. Like would work well. Heck, I'm not even interested in preserving tweet credit. The point is about what's shared now who shared it right? I think that certain folks want to maintain their status as great sharers. Retweeting helps do that for them.

Your alternative, liking vs retweeting, makes better sense. However, in the current Twitter model, how would we see things that others mark as liked? I'd imagine they just show up in the tweet stream as coming from the person who originally sent it, but show up in our stream even if we aren't following them.

Example:

@DaveWiner Found this great link see xyz.com

-@tojosan likes it.

@bethrae is following @tojosan but not @DaveWiner

In @bethrae's twitter following stream, the @davewiner tweet shows up as:
Found this great link. see xyz.com (via @tojosan @DaveWiner)

Or some such?

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

Eliot — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:22:05 -0000

I like this approach. Favorite = Like. But sometimes I'd like to be able to vote up but not crowd my favorites list with the item. A Favorite is something I want to keep, to return to or follow up on. That's too heavy for a "like". Perhaps there needs to be something like a "nod of approval", or "nod" for short..

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

scott — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:50:17 -0000

"Like" <> "Retweet"

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

webaddict — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:03:47 -0000

Interesting post Dave. It inspired me to write my own retort to your post. Hope it makes sense. :)

http://openpresswire.com/tw...

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

Albert Willis — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 21:47:46 -0000

I agree—retweet should be a function of the Twitter website and of the Twitter API. I actually said this a while ago: http://www.backtype.com/alw....

As Dave said, retweeting shouldn't take any of the precious 140 characters of a tweet—I couldn't agree more. When Twitter gets out of firefighting mode and starts adding features again, this should be among the first they add.

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

Joe Lazarus — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:06:20 -0000

Twitter offers something similar to FriendFeed "likes" through their "favorites" feature (ie. click the little star next to any post). The problem is that favorites are only visible to people who favorite, not to their followers. If there was a way to see other people's favorites, either for everyone or as an opt-in, there would be no need for retweets.

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

Fabio Lalli — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 05:28:52 -0000

I do not think like you. I think that the retweet is a technique for sharing information but retweet be used with caution.

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

imackenze — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:40:06 -0000

It's kinda like voting, but any implementation would need to retain the "hey famous guy that I'm parroting! please notice me!" side of it to be successful.

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

imackenze — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:37:45 -0000

Seamus is right - an important facet of re-tweeting is name-dropping, spamming, and the general 'personal brand' building crap side of twitter.

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

hillary hartley — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:19:20 -0000

There's no reason Twitter couldn't build a better method for surfacing things you "like" or "favorite" so that things would bubble up exactly the same way without the messy user experience of "RT". Newbies have no idea what that is and often use it incorrectly.

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

hillary hartley — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:17:19 -0000

Also, if Twitter had a better method of surfacing the things we favorite then it could be a user preference to turn them off (just like @Replies). As it is, I usually just end up unfollowing people who retweet more than I like. Not an ideal solution.

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

Mike Wilson — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:27:19 -0000

See I never thought of it that way. I think of RTing as passing something forward to the cross section of people who are following me who likely haven't seen it.

- Digg's failure is that it allows downvoting. The result of that is that people pounce on something to bury it.

I dunno what FF or others do. There are too many of these damn things already.

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

seamuscondron — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:09:28 -0000

If our Twitter feed consisted solely of links to our website, it would be pretty useless, and a turn off. People don't want a marketing channel, they want value. We have expanded our audience by providing information people find useful. And they are grateful for that. The feed is a powerful extension of our website and has become part of our brand experience. An increasing number of people have discovered us via Twitter first.

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

egoldstein — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:08:36 -0000

Actually, a retweet is pretty much the exact same thing as a pop on clipmarks.com(pops preceeded retweets by about 2 years). When a user on clipmarks pops a clip it does EXACTLY what you say a retweet should do. This is not the case on digg or reddit...but, not surprisingly, Clipmarks gets ignored...seems to work that way.

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

Ari Herzog — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:55:49 -0000

Sounds like you similarly "like" Facebook's application of "like" in their stream, which was copied from FriendFeed? Now, do you like Digg, Reddit, and their ilk?

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

Ari Herzog — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:53:52 -0000

Seamus, shouldn't the goal of MediaBistro be to send people to your website? How does a retweet do anything but send people to following your twitter account?

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

edyavno — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:20:24 -0000

Yes, the fact that you often need re-edit a retweeted message is stupid.
The simple answer though is that Twitter doesn't do retweet, it's entirely users' idea which Twitter still doesn't support.
Twitter web interface does not have RT option - it's only available from 3rd party apps and scripts. Hence poor support for it.

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

Louis Gray — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:29:07 -0000

Dave, we're on the same wavelength again. Just Friday I posted that Retweeting was lazy. Not everybody agreed, of course, but I explained why I don't retweet.

You Have Entered a No Retweeting Zone, Please Proceed
http://www.louisgray.com/li...

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

rogerben — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:07:43 -0000

Dave: I think you're giving too much credit to "like", since it's kinda hosed. Like many folks, 1/3 of the time, I "like" something so my network will see it. But I also end up using it to keep track of things I want to return to later (as a bookmark, IOW), and occasionally as a personal pat-on-the-back to the author. In the latter instances, it would be better if the action *didn't* end up pushed out to friends and FOAFs.

You've also got to remember that your Twitter network doesn't look like everyone else's. My wife uses Twitter almost exclusively as a non-geek semi-synchronous chat room, and given Twitter's awful conversation support, RTs are the best way to push the discussion around. There's no real sense of voting... it's making sure that some funny bit of snark reaches beyond the author's own network.

And finally, a little nitpick. "Share" is Friendfeed's version of RT. "Like" is FF's version of favorites, IMO. It's Twitter's favorite functionality that's broken, not the concept of retweeting.

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

dave — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:47:31 -0000

That would do it. When I favorite an item it goes in my output stream.

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

ryantate — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:46:35 -0000

Yes that would rock and solve the problem! As long as there is some sort of formatting explaining who favorited it. Favorites should look a touch different in the feed. (As I mentioned above before seeing your post http://www.scripting.com/st...

Re: Retweet is stupid (Scripting News)

ryantate — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:41:02 -0000

You nailed it -- favorites is key -- Twitter needs to make a tiny tweak to favorites and it would have a huge impact: just put Favorites in with the whole stream -- when you follow someone you get both their tweets and their favorites (with some kind of formatting for the favorite so it's clear who you got it via and why). Same for RSS -- default feed should have both faves and items.

You'd want to be able to turn this off person by person or all at once, of course.

(Update oh I see Jim Roepcke also said this below)