Twitter's new retweets fail to fix an unbroken system
Twitter’s new retweet system isn’t exactly new anymore, but the way in which it is implemented feels like it would be an older system, reducing ease of use and accessibility. Prior to the ‘upgrade’, retweeting consisted of a simple tweet including the original tweet, tweeter and a marker. The marker first started as ‘RT’, but over time, variations were ‘invented.’ In the early DestroyTwiter days, Josh Corliss suggested using ‘>’ instead of ‘RT’, which saves a character and simply looks better. Many users reference tweets with ‘(via @username)’ or ‘/via @username’ to summarize instead of using word-for-word retweets. All of these options can be edited, daisy-chained, and commented on. They also appear in the retweeted user’s mentions timeline, notifying him/her of a retweet. With the new system, all of these features are either diminished or elongated.
To give an idea of the work on the developer, the new retweet system introduces the following API methods:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | statuses/retweet statuses/retweets statuses/id/retweeted_by statuses/id/retweeted_by/ids statuses/retweeted_by_me statuses/retweeted_to_me statuses/retweeted_of_me |
The original system requires only two:
1 2 | statuses/update statuses/mentions |
Of course, the new system brings more control, but is it all necessary? In order to see which tweets of yours were retweeted and by whom, the statuses/retweeted_of_me method must be called, followed by the statuses/retweets method for each tweet. Unless you’re whitelisted (have 20,000 API calls), calling these methods, in addition to the common methods, could certainly add up quick. On top of that, both methods would need to be polled consistently to stay up-to-date in case additional retweets were made. Unless the developer of the app you use wants to bend over backwards to notify you of new retweets, you’re forced to visit Twitter.com to check.
Now, is it really such a big deal to know how many times or by whom your tweets are retweeted? Not entirely, but I personally gauge which tweets my followers react to the most by how many times the tweets are retweeted. If I tweet about DestroyTwitter and it’s retweeted a dozen times, then I tweet a video of my cat that only results in crickets, I’ll know to lay off the cat videos—but that’s just me. Other users find new people to follow by seeing who retweets their tweets.
With the new system, Twitter makes it harder on both developers and users. The original system worked and worked well. Many users, like myself, reject the new system and continue to use the original one. Because of this, users must reference multiple locations instead of one. This once simple-as-can-be feature is now a nuisance.
Twitter used to be simple. It still can be depending on which app you use, but if other features are ‘improved upon’ as retweets were, we might end up with unavoidable obstacles. I’m growing tired of services that start out beautifully, then take a turn for the worst after being packed full of unneeded additions. A prime example is Facebook, but that’s for another time.
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I agree with you, but now that the company has made this ‘progress’ do you think that they would ever take a step back towards simplicity?
@Tim — In all honesty, no. We’ve seen services like Facebook take a step back after mass uproar, but Twitter doesn’t follow suit. Back when they removed the setting to show all friends’ tweets in the home timeline, including mentions to non-friends, users went crazy, but Twitter just stood there ground waiting for everyone to calm down—and they did. Most users forget about that. Also with the constant wave of new users, each day is the norm for those users. They weren’t around early on, so the new retweet system looks like the standard method and they embrace it. As long as there’s a solid amount of people using the system and developers willing to support it, it’s here to stay.
I think i see what they are doing with this. As soon as i saw this it made me think of database normalization. Whereas we had an easier (for devs) method of doing things, the new way will help twitter get more granular data from their users, which im sure they’ll be using with their new ways of promoting tweets. This is going to work great for business trying to following what tweets they put out and which ones work against other ones.
I agree that it does harm the dev of a client a bit, but from this standpoint it makes sense.
Retweets *didn’t* work well for me, before, and overall the new one feels is simpler and easier to me.
I never retweeted before now, always used favorites. And, I hated that the extra characters for “RT @lmorchard” prompted people retweeting me to edit down my 135-140 character tweets, adding txting speak that I’d never use myself for fear of sounding like a moron.
To me, as a user, it’s simple now. I love the new single-click retweet system that doesn’t need editing, and I like all the new metrics afforded by the API. I guess I’m not seeing your gripes, beyond the effort to implement the new features in a Twitter client.
This is how systems like this evolve successfully. Watch for common behavior patterns, pave the cow paths. I would expect more of this, really.
It’s about semantics. A retweet is not a mention or a reply. So there is no reason for showing up in “mentions”. The biggest problem was, that a tweet which is worth retweeting and has 140 chars, couldn’t be retweeted without messing with the tweet (shorten the tweet or use a tweetlonger). The semnatic way is not mention”. It is “forwarding”. So in the first place nobody knew a definitive way how to retweet correctly (as you say above) and now developers have to implement a few more things one single time. so what’s the matter? Retweets appear in your timeline because they matter to the people you follow and could matter to you. If not, you can mute retweets from specific persons. You have much more control over retweets and a clear separation between retweets and mentions. And retweets don’t appear “sometimes”(*). They appear always. Another benefit: You can watch retweets with a tabbed view. Yet another benefit: If your tweets is very interesting you don’t receive hundreds of mentions anymore. big plus. before: untransparent. no: clear and transparent. Definitely NOT broken.
(*) http://twitter.com/destroytoday/status/12365621761
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I do miss the good ol’ days on Twitter. The original RT feature, though it may not have been official, was a perfectly good system that just worked. It’s understandable why Twitter did what they did. Their “fix” enables them to gather more user data, but at what cost? The user experience just isn’t the same w/o seeing an RT in our timelines IMHO.
@James — I think you might have hit the nail on the head with their reasoning. I just wish it wouldn’t come at an expense to others.
@Leslie — True, the new system has its benefits for many users, but I like to add something extra to things I retweet and that’s not possible with the new system. I totally experience the whole “Ugh, I don’t talk like this” scenario when strapped for chars.
@Thomas — I retweet could be considered a mention since you’re referencing the original author, but if this was the case, the statuses/retweeted_of_me API method should return all of the other users’ retweets of yours, not just a single instance of your own tweet that has been retweeted. That way you avoid the additional calls and the need to consistently poll the method on each retweet—you can just poll that single method with a since_id. Regarding the retweets appearing sometimes, I have tested it at length, making sure retweets are turned on for certain users and they still don’t appear in the home timeline of Twitter.com or the home timeline API method. They do, however, appear in the retweeted_of_me method, so I know they’re going through.