Twitter. Retweets. If you know what I’m talking about, read on. If you don’t, go to the next post. Simple as that. And yes, this is a rant, because it really irritates me that some people refuse to use it simply because they can’t comment on Tweets, yet that very person keeps retweeting verbatim tweets from someone without making any comments. So uh, why not use the new method, duh? Anyway, to business.
Why you should NOT use Twitter’s new RT method:
It doesn’t allow for commenting on Tweets. Okay, yes, fair point, but about 1 out of every 20 retweets that I ever do have a comment from me, so really, it doesn’t bother me. And most of the time, it doesn’t need a comment. If you retweeted someone, well, you either liked their tweet, or found it funny, or useful, or nice. There’s no need to say that. Really. I get it. 
Twitter could “fix” this by adding some kind of “comment” tweet attatched to it, but honestly, I don’t see the need. As it is, I rarely want to comment on retweets, so…whatever.
Why you SHOULD use Twitter’s new RT method:
Duplicates. I follow over 200 people, many of whom know each other – for example, I follow the iTweetReply (iPhone app) team. This consists of three developers, plus the iTweetReply Twitter account and the Syncode Twitter account. When one of these Tweets, do I really need to see the same thing, but retweeted five times? Five times? Five times? Five times? Five times? Yeah, exactly. Sure it might be getting you more exposure, but in the end it’s just pissing me off (and doubtless other people as well).
Annoying people who RT too much. Thankfully, none of my followers retweet stuff so much that I want to disable them, but it’s there if I ever do. I’m close to switching off retweets for one person, but, alas, they’re still using the old method. Yet their personal tweets are interesting, so I don’t want to unfollow them.
You and your company, product, or business. I follow you. You tweet about your personal life. I like this. You also retweet almost everything about your product or company says. Which I don’t care about because I don’t use it or I use a different product. This doesn’t really come under retweets, but it’s almost as bad. I don’t really need to know when your product has a new feature or website or information about it or stats…if I wanted to know this, I would follow your product’s Twitter account. Not you. And then when you did retweet it, using the new method, I could see that tweet, once, and that’s it. Okay?
It’s easier to keep track of. On Twitter’s website, it shows information about your retweets. Including stuff like how many people retweeted something, which of your tweets have been retweeted, and so on. It’s like a super mini version of Google Analytics, but for retweets! 
It’s less annoying. I love Twitter’s “mentions” feature. It lets me see who has mentioned me in a tweet, or sent me a reply. What I don’t like is when 50 people* retweet something of mine, and then I get 50 mentions of something that I said. Really, I don’t need to see all that. Even more so when every @reply to me is sent via push notifications to my iPhone – it becomes annoying.
It’s a Twitter feature. It’s there to be used, so use it! Remember when @replies were changed to mentions? Everyone cried and said it was a horrible thing and the world would end. 2 months later, no one said anything, because guess what, it works. Once Twitter refine the new retweet method (by adding commenting like I explained above – which other people want), and most, if not all Twitter clients implement it, I would hope that everyone switches over to using it, because it’s great.
*as if I’m that popular. The most I’ve ever had has been about 20 people, and that was only once. Still, god knows what it would be like if I was famous. I’d stab my eyes out.
