Art of the Retweet
Twitter is a valuable source of information and interaction. And in this world of brevity, there is a new trend that has been flourishing in the past several months.
A “retweet” for those uninitiated is when a person literally quotes someone else’s tweet (or post). Several of Twitter’s most popular people garner attention by simply retweeting what others say or what their sources link to. So in effect, they become popular simply because they repeat the same thing over and over again.
There is a right way and a wrong way in my opinion to retweet, and this goes back to the definition of a retweet itself. If I see someone asking for a retweet to promote a podcast episode, a blog post etc, I write it like this, “RT @whatshisface’this is a retweetable message’.” Notice, I give credit to the person who says the statement and all is well. But more often than not, I see this popping up, “RT @astralaudio: RT @whatshisface ‘This is a tweetable message’.” If this were an everyday scenario, the example would be, “Well I heard from @astralaudio who heard it from @whatshisface.” Our quote has instantly turned into the internet version of gossip.
Personally, when I see a retweet of a retweet of a retweet, it is annoying and reminds me of this video.
If you were to encounter that kind of behavior at your job, with your friends, or at school (for those of you in academia), you would more than likely disassociate yourself from that person. To save yourself from joining the growing number of double, triple, multiple retweeting crowd, please only quote the original source whenever possible. No, you may not be a journalist, but the same ethical consideration should apply.
That is my serving of food for thought. What’s yours?
