The Greatness of the Retweet

I noticed some interesting news this evening on TechCrunch – Twitter is working on formalizing the retweet. For the uninitiated, a retweet is a rebroadcast of some other person’s comment or tweet on Twitter. It usually begins with “RT” followed by the username of the person who originated the comment. I would retweet if I read something interesting and I thought my followers would also find it interesting. The structure ensures attribution of the original thought and I think the whole concept is what really makes Twitter a community.

A typical "Retweet"

My first reaction is that the formalization would be a shame. I have always appreciated the grassroots nature of this construct. Until now, retweeting was something developed informally by the users, not a tool provided by Twitter itself. Obviously, given the 140 character limit of tweets, the mechanism had to be brief, and I think this ad-hoc system is about as efficient as it could possibly be; which is why the founders are making a change.

On second thought, I’ve warmed up to the idea. It would certainly clean up the content and make it more readable. My Facebook friends love to rag on me for my seemingly unintelligible retweets because I set my Facebook status to my last tweet. I suppose, retweets would no longer be treated like a standard tweet to API users such as the Facebook connect guys, and would be more like replies. This is a collateral impact the founders and the community should start thinking about. Twitter’s value is in the broadcast, so it would unwise to diminish this.

It’s commonly known, at least in business school circles, that the only marketing metric really worth tracking is your promoter score. Every retweet, essentially, is a positive vote of confidence and an endorsement to the originator. The local tech council, the NCTC, clearly realizes this with their “The Great Retweet” promotion for an upcoming event (which my company, Vision Point Systems will be attending). Would this campaign be as fun, effective, or interesting with the new retweet format?

If the new feature helps content creators gather these metrics, it’s worthwhile. If it weakens the effectiveness of the retweet process, it could be disasterous.