disparate.info

As Twitter grapples with its explosive growth over the past months, the service has begun formalizing practices its users created. First, it was the use of “@” to identify a user’s handle, followed by hashtags (#[term]) to better organize tweets on related topics and aid in searching. Most recently, Twitter has formalized the retweet process. Early Twitter users adopted the “RT @[handle]” syntax to indicate tweets that were the product of another user. Now, users for whom the beta feature has been activated will find a Retweet button () on individual tweets. The resulting tweet is marked with the chasing-line icon in place of the familiar “RT” tag. Below is a screenshot of the announcement, which includes an example of how retweets are now displayed.

As co-founder Evan Williams explained earlier this week, the move was in part motivated by Twitter’s desire to standardize a function that has become central to the service. As part of this new feature, users will only see retweets from others that they follow, a change intended to cut down on the redundancy that can result when a popular tweet is retweeted by many users. That decision, while controversial, should reduce the clutter (“noisiness” as Williams referred to it) that some Twitter users have complained about. Personally, I think the move was a smart one, because the appearing/disappearing act the Retweet function has played recently was getting annoying.

The announcement that appeared atop my Twitter page after I recently retweeted.

Related posts:

1. Twitter’s Creative Error MessagesThe now-infamous Fail Whale isn’t Twitter’s only creative way of...
2. Twitter Copyright Missed The Ball DropBrowsing Twitter today, I noticed that the copyright notice in...
3. Google Wave InvitesI have 15 Google Wave invitations to give away. Know...
4. No CAPTCHAs for Intense DebateSince switching this site to the Intense Debate (ID) commenting...
5. Foursquare’s Fail WhaleFoursquare, the location-based service where users check in and earn...