Twitter Completes Retweet Link Rolls Out; Caution Still Recommended

Almost two weeks ago, I urged early reci­pients of the Twit­ter ret­weet link to be cau­tious with its use, because most third party clients see­med una­ble to dis­play these retweets.

Today I’m repea­ting the cau­tion, and it’s not only because of spotty third party client imple­men­ta­tion. It’s also because these new ret­weets don’t become “real time” in the Twitter.com time­line for tweets made by anyone you are already following.

High Level Sum­mary
One of the advan­ta­ges (to the ori­gi­nal author) of RTs is that each beco­mes a new tweet, a new ins­tance. This inc­rea­ses the chance that someone will “see” the ori­gi­nal tweet.

Think of a ret­weet as “bum­ping” an item “up” in time. But that’s not how the new Twitter.com inter­face works. On low volume accounts, this isn’t a big issue. But on mode­rate– to high-volume accounts (mea­su­red by num­ber follo­wed), it is. Here’s why.

Twit­ter doesn’t “bump” the old tweet — it merely chan­ges the “ret­wee­ted by” count. So if you read your Tweets on the Twitter.com site and mis­sed a tweet the first time around, you’ll miss it each-and-every time it’s ret­wee­ted … because it will remain in “his­tory,” far below the fold.

The third party clients that have imple­men­ted the new ret­weet fea­ture, howe­ver, appear to be trea­ting the ret­weet like a new ins­tance. In other words, they are trea­ting them like the “old” ret­weets. The pro­blem: some popu­lar third party clients haven’t yet imple­men­ted the feature.

1. Twitter.com — The new RT fea­ture does not “bump” tweets, ie, these new ret­weets are not “real time” for tweets made by anyone you are already follo­wing. I think this is a fatal flaw.
2. Tweet­Deck — both desk­top and iPhone appli­ca­tion — is still not dis­pla­ying ret­weets sent via the “ret­weet link” in the Twit­ter web interface.
3. Sees­mic Desk­top is still not dis­pla­ying ret­weets sent via the “ret­weet link” in the Twit­ter web interface.
4. Brizzly, a beta web inter­face for mana­ging your Twit­ter and Face­book accounts, is dis­pla­ying the new retweets
5. Twee­te­la­tor and Tweetie2 (iphone apps) are still dis­pla­ying the new retweets

Metho­do­logy
In order to test how well clients ren­der the new ret­weets, I “brac­ke­ted” the new ret­weet with an old-fashioned copy-and-paste one — either imme­dia­tely before or imme­dia­tely after using the Twit­ter ret­weet link. I sent ret­weets from all three of my accounts: @kegill, @kegill_uw, @kathygill. Each account follows the other two; this is great for testing!

1. Twitter.com
Even though I do not follow Howard Rhein­gold from my @kegill_uw account, the ret­weet sho­wed up in that time­line on Twitter.com, with his ava­tar. Note that the times­tamp rela­tes to when Howard twee­ted, not when I ret­wee­ted. This is a major change and is a little jarring if you’re loo­king at tweets before and after it that were sent seconds ago. Twit­ter should add the time stamp after “you”. This time-stamp busi­ness has other rami­fi­ca­tions that I will explain momentarily.

On both of my low-volume accounts, the Twitter.com inter­face shows both ori­gi­nal and test ret­weets in real-time. But on my high volume account, @kegill, not a sin­gle test tweet (there were four) was dis­pla­yed in real-time. Why not?

For exam­ple, the @kathy­gill time­line shows mul­ti­ple ret­weets — both the “test” ret­weets as well as tweets ret­wee­ted by the account and by other accounts. This is a very very low volume account (follows 18 mostly low-volume accounts).

Next, see an exam­ple of the @kegill time­line, with the @eMarketer test ret­weet sho­wing at the top. In this ins­tance, the test ret­weet was made after the new ret­weet, as you can see from the prior screen capture.

The ori­gi­nal tweet, with the eMar­ke­ter ava­tar, did not appear in my @kegill real-time time­line on Twitter.com, although I ret­wee­ted it, using the new fea­ture, from both @kathygill and @kegill_uw. I went 5 minu­tes back in time loo­king for it, even though the tweets were sent seconds apart.

This is a big pro­blem with the new feature.

Because @kegill already follows @eMarketer, that tweet had already been dis­pla­yed in my time­line. The new ret­weet doesn’t “bump” the tweet in time, it merely chan­ges the “how many peo­ple RTed” data on the ori­gi­nal tweet. This means ret­weets aren’t “real-time” for anyone who is already follo­wing the account you ret­weet. I think this is a fatal flaw.

Howe­ver, if someone that I do not follow is ret­wee­ted by someone that I do follow, that ret­weet shows up in real-time, even when it’s really old (in this case, 48 hours old):

One of the advan­ta­ges of the new fea­ture, howe­ver, is public metrics. Twit­ter added a “Ret­weets” link beneath favo­ri­tes (right hand navi­ga­tion). It’s a handy way to see how many peo­ple ret­weet the things you do (or your tweets) as well as who they are.

2 and 3. Tweet­Deck and Seesmic

I made seve­ral attempts to see if Tweet­Deck would dis­play a tweet that was ret­wee­ted via the new web inter­face link. Not a sin­gle one was dis­pla­yed on Tweet­Deck, whether iPhone app or desk­top app. I do have the latest ver­sion of Tweet­Deck on both the desk­top and iPhone.

Here are sam­ple screenshots — they show the “test” ret­weet (copy-and-paste). I guess you’ll have to take my word for it when I saw the ori­gi­nal did not show on any screen.

In this screenshot from the desk­top, the “test” ret­weet was sent imme­dia­tely after the ori­gi­nal. Howard Rheingold’s tweet, without my “test” label, did not show up in TweetDeck.

The same is true for Tweet­Deck iPhone. In this ins­tance, the “test” ret­weet was sent imme­dia­tely prior to the original.

Sees­mic Desk­top does not dis­play the new ret­weets, either. What follows are three screen cap­tu­res — one from Twitter.com, sho­wing a ret­weet; one from Sees­mic, sho­wing that it is mis­sing; and one from Tweet­deck, sho­wing that it’s missing.

4. Brizzly
Brizzly is in beta (just ask if you’d like an invi­ta­tion) and is doing a great job of ren­de­ring new retweets.

4. iPhone appli­ca­tion Twee­te­la­tor
There’s no change since my last report; Twee­te­la­tor is still dis­pla­ying the new ret­weets. Moreo­ver, it marks them with a little flag:

Conc­lu­sion
First, the new ret­weet link is desig­ned to make it easier for peo­ple to ret­weet. Howe­ver, there’s nothing to stop old-fashioned copy-and-paste if you’re using the Twitter.com web inter­face. Keep an eye on how your third-party clients imple­ment this fea­ture — will they retain their current “RT” pro­cess or adopt the new? My vote is for the former.

Second, one advan­tage of using the ret­weet link is the Ret­weets sum­mary link, just below Favo­ri­tes in the right-hand navi­ga­tion. This fea­ture makes public sta­tis­tics about each ret­weet — just how many peo­ple ret­wee­ted and who they are. I’m not con­vin­ced this advan­tage out­weighs the limi­ta­tions of ret­weets not being real-time, howe­ver, for mode­rate– to high-volume accounts.

The­re­fore, until Twit­ter dis­plays ret­weets in real-time in the time­line (something that I doubt they will do) and until all third party clients dis­play ret­weets (hope­fully like Twee­te­la­tor and Brizzly, in real-time), I again urge cau­tion if you are using Twit­ter for bran­ding or influence. Not only is there an issue with ever­yone being able to see these ret­weets (think Tweet­deck) but there is the issue of their pos­sibly not being real-time on the Twitter.com interface.

This post first appea­red at Wired­Pen