Twitter and Retweeting
Posted in Internet, Technology, Twitter on 03/02/2009 05:05 pm by JamesI’ve had many friends ask me what a Retweet is and we’ll get to that but first… what is Twitter?
Twitter is a social website that I’ve been using for a few years and it’s a place where you can tell the entire world (wide web) what you are doing, as long as it’s 140 characters or less. To the left there you’ll see my twitter updates. Examples of things you might post here is “Working on my website”, “Cooking dinner”, or “Cashing my tax refund and heading to Frys”
That’s about as basic of an explanation as you can get. People use it for all sorts of other things like promoting their blog or putting out some great information. Sometimes when another user finds some information they think would be great to share they aren’t sure the best way to do so. That’s where Retweeting comes in. It’s not polite to just steal someones tweet and post it as your own so instead you should prefix the tweet and give props back to the original poster. Here’s what you do:
Copy the tweet you want to retweet. Start a new tweet and type RT @jamescochran and then paste the original tweet. Of course replace my user name with the name of the original twitterer.
You may ask why you should go through all the trouble? It’s because you have your list of friends but all your friends may not be following the same people you are or have the same followers. As a matter of fact the chances are very good you don’t. Essentially this allows you to share information from one network with your network. And then someone from your network my share that information with all the people on their network.
It’s all about word of mouth. I, for one, always pay more attention to tweets that have been Retweeted because I know it’s information that at least two people thought was important or worth reading. So if you found this link on Twitter make sure you go back and Retweet this!