What does “re-tweet” mean? I just got on Twitter and see this RT stuff a lot. What’s going on?
Word of mouth on Twitter
Re-Tweeting on Twitter a way of forwarding someone else’s status update on to all of your followers. If you see a tweet from one of your contacts and decide that it may be of value or interest to others, you can “re-tweet” it so that all of your followers see it as well. It’s essentially word-of-mouth for online social networking.
How to compose a re-tweet
A re-tweet is simply a Twitter update with the following syntax:
[re-tweet prefix] [username of original author] [message]
- The re-tweet prefix indicates to your followers that this is not one of your own updates, but rather a tweet by someone else which you consider attention-worthy and have decided to pass along.
- The username of the original author lets your followers know who first wrote this message. If a message has been re-tweeted multiple times, a lot of people may just make this the username of whomever they got the tweet from.
- Finally, the message is whatever you want your followers to read.
There is no standard prefix for re-tweets, but there are a handful that pretty common: “retweet/re-tweet/re tweeting”, “RT” and ♺ (the recycle symbol). Here are a few examples of re-tweeting:
- Re-tweeting @ozac Insert meaningful Twitter update here.
- RT @ozac Insert meaningful Twitter update here.
- ♺ @ozac Insert meaningful Twitter update here.
Many people who re-tweet go for the shortest possible prefix due to Twitter’s limit of 140 characters per update, hence “RT” and ♺ in lieu of the full spelling “re-tweeting” (although while some are enthusiastic about using the recycle symbol, others have issues with it).
Re-tweeting with Twitter client software
Many desktop Twitter clients support re-tweeting. Take a look at this screenshot from Twhirl:
As you can see, by hovering over a user’s icon next to their status update in Twhirl a few buttons are displayed, one of which is the re-tweet button. By hitting this button I can quickly re-tweet this status update.
What’s the deal?
On the surface, re-tweeting is a simple way of passing along information on Twitter — much like forwarding e-mails or linking to web sites. But when we take a closer look at the practice we see that an interesting measure of one’s authority on Twitter is beginning to emerge in the form of the re-tweet.
Google uses inbound links as a major ingredient in their web site ranking algorithms, and now many are saying that how often one’s updates are re-tweeted is a major factor in determining their authority as a Twitter user. And the importance of determining Twitter authority will only rise as the service continues its march towards mainstream adoption, further necessitating ways to filter, search, sort, and rank information in the Twitterverse.
