Some users on Twitter have received Twitter’s new Retweet function (in beta), which allows a user to click a button to tweet someone else’s message: simple and painless, right?
My nerves are utterly tested by the new button.
Here are three reasons why the Twitter Retweet button may not be as good as advertised.
First, you can’t modify the actual Tweet to make it appear as you like. That means that you can’t add your own message onto the front or end of the Tweet, and you certainly can’t take out someone else’s *relevant* thoughts or hashtags.
With the old way of retweeting, Tweeps could add thoughts, short messages, hashtags, whatever.
The new way of retweeting emphasizes title and links-only, and until people start tweeting thoughts and opinions about otherwise retweetable content in separate Tweets, the value of the retweet button will be limited as people will create new Tweets to share their own views/hashtags.
The addition of a “Retweets” tab adds to the clutter of the Twitter layout. One of the great things I like about Twitter is the simplicity of the platform. It’s so simple to use on the surface, yet so complex in how to use it properly for a given users’ needs.
Twitter, do yourself a favor: keep the interface basic. There has to be a way to track retweets without needing to add on a whole other tab to your page layout.
It’s lazy and could lower the impact of the retweeting system as a whole. Let’s see…little effort to retweet means that the total number of retweets should increase.
Similar to blind Digging, more Twitter users could begin to engage in blind retweeting: meaning that a high amount of unsatisfactory content gets pushed out to the public stream.
Not to mention, it could produce a significant security effect. If a user Tweets a malicious link and puts an otherwise-interesting headline or title in the Tweet, people could blindly retweet it and put others at risk.
The little bit of effort it takes to copy and paste the Tweet and username of the user into a Tweet makes users think about what they’re sharing with others. It’s simply too easy to click a button and retweet a poor link or a malicious website.
What do you think of the new Twitter Retweet button?
