New Twitter RT Link: Use Caution

For those of you who are in the Twit­ter “ret­weet” beta test, I have a word of advice: pro­ceed cautiously.

Here’s why. Currently, ret­weets that are exe­cu­ted via the Twit­ter web “ret­weet link” are visi­ble to your follo­wers who are using theweb inter­face to read your tweets but are not visi­ble to popu­lar third party clients.

Let me say that a dif­fe­rent way: popu­lar third party appli­ca­tions are currently not dis­pla­ying RTs exe­cu­ted via the Twit­ter web inter­face “ret­weet” link. In other words, these ret­weets are MIA in a follower’s time­line in popu­lar third-party clients. The excep­tion: Tweetie2.

This may be a “cart before the horse” pro­blem. In other words, third party appli­ca­tions may not have had a chance to inte­grate the new API. Or it may be that Twit­ter pri­vi­le­ged Tweetie2 deve­lo­pers. I don’t know.

But if most of your follo­wers read your tweets using third party desk­top clients, this “bug” could have a serious impact on your per­so­nal ret­weet rate in the short-term. Expe­ri­ment wisely. And mindfully.

The Story In Pictures

Peo­ple who are part of the beta test will see a familiar-looking “alert” on their Twit­ter home page:

Sen­ding A Ret­weet With The New Feature

Twit­ter has made it very easy to send a ret­weet via the web inter­face. This may be an attempt to make the web inter­face a more plea­sant expe­rience for peo­ple who follow a lot of accounts. Cer­tainly, the abi­lity to easily ret­weet has been a mains­tay of third-party Twit­ter clients.

(1) Read your tweets via the web inter­face. When you find a tweet that seems inte­res­ting enough to share with your follo­wers, mouse-over. You’ll see the “ret­weet” link to the right of the fami­liar “reply” link.

(2) After you ret­weet, this is what the tweet looks like from your home page: it bears the ava­tar of the ori­gi­nal account (ins­tead of your ava­tar) and inc­lu­des infor­ma­tion about who ret­wee­ted it as a tagline. Thus, this new fea­ture might make it easier to dis­co­ver inte­res­ting peo­ple to follow.

ver­sus

(3) On your pro­file page, the visual dif­fe­rence starts with an icon ins­tead of ini­tials (RT). Again, the Twit­ter ID that shows is the ori­gi­nal author, not the per­son who ret­wee­ted. Note that there is an “undo” option. I haven’t tes­ted it to see how long this “delete” fea­ture takes.

(4) In addi­tion, Twit­ter tells you how many other peo­ple have ret­wee­ted a spe­ci­fic tweet. That’s an incen­tive, of sorts, to use the new feature.

Recei­ving A Ret­weet With The New Feature

If you are in the beta test, when you receive a ret­weet from someone else in the beta-test, you’ll see an alert when you are rea­ding your tweets from the web. But if you aren’t rea­ding them from the web, you won’t see those ret­weets in Sees­mic, Tweet­deck or TwitBirdPro.

(1) If you are in the beta test, Twit­ter gives you a heads-up to explain why you are seeing a new ava­tar in your time­line. This is a smart move for the part of the Twit­ter com­mu­nity that follows a small-ish num­ber of accounts; for them, the new ava­tar might be visually jarring.

(2) If you are not in the beta test, your ret­weets look exactly like they always have, in the web inter­face. (This is how my “new ret­weet” tweet looks in my kegill_uw account. Yes, I follow myself there.)

(3) Howe­ver, the pro­blem comes for your follo­wers who do not use the web to read your Tweets. The Twitter-powered ret­weet simply falls into a black hole.

First, see the Bar­bara Cle­ments ret­weet in con­text (the tweets before and after it, web inter­face). Then look at Seem­sic, from the desk­top, and Tweet­deck and Twit­Bird­Pro, from the iPhone. Notice that the Bar­bara Cle­ments ret­weet is MIA in all three instances.

(4) One excep­tion appears to be Tweetie2. My @romensko ret­weet from the new inter­face does show up in my kegill_uw account in Tweetie2, just like it did on the web interface.

So there you have it.

Be judi­cious in your use of the new ret­weet link if you think most of your follo­wers read your tweets from a third party client, unless that client is Tweetie2. I’ll update this post as I test more clients.

Update: 10.30 pm Satur­day
Here is the “base” tweet we’re loo­king for:

And how that ret­weet “looks” at the kegill_uw account, in context:

(1) No Go: Twitscoop:

(2) No Go: Twitterrific:

(3) No Go: Twit­Bird­Pro
There was an update for this appli­ca­tion at the iTu­nes store, but it didn’t ena­ble this functionality.

This post first appea­red at Wired­Pen

Tagged as: retweet