Twitter is a great forum. It is simple, easy and very open. Lets not forget it forces people to be to the point and not waste any words thanks to the 140 character limit. The other day I was looking up my Twitter timeline. It was a mess, the tweets flowed continuously at the rate of two or three every few seconds. I do not follow a lot of people on Twitter. At the time of writing this article I was following 56 twitter users.
That is not a lot but still I simply could possible not read all the tweets of the 56 people I follow. The main reason for this is Retweet. I mean I was wondering what would happen if ReTweets did not exist. The concept just would not be around?
Things that would happen if Retweet did not exist…
- Witty comments would not be copied over and over with RT in front of it. People would just have to write their own clever tweets. 😛
- Blogs would not show off Retweet counter like it really reflected how good the content actually was or wasn’t.
- People on Twitter would actually be able to follow a reasonable number of people. I find it hard that someone following a 1000 Twitter accounts pays any attention to my Tweets. 😐
- Auto RT and all related applications would be out of business and think that would mean less spam. Less spam would mean internet marketers will not try to approach me. Seriously I wont click on a link which offers to get a zillion visitors to my blog.
- Finally Twitter would be cleaner and when I look at my timeline I wont have to stare at RT being typed a 100 times times over. I do work for rtCamp which does have ‘rt‘, but seriously ‘RT‘ in front of 90% of the Tweets you read sounds a little ridiculous.
I must admit I am not really attacking the ReTweet options in Twitter but more venting out my disappointment with how much spam there is on Twitter. I know some users tweets 40 tweets a day. It doesnt really take much time thanks to so many interesting applications around which help you automate most of your Tweets.
Maybe we should look at Twitter as a place to speak out and share our views rather than just repeat each other. What are you views on this subject?
Do you think we would have a cleaner Twitter if Retweets never existed? Do drop in your comments with you view and yes if you liked this post a lot you can share with with the Retweet button at the top. ;-D
5 Comments
A thoughtful article Aditya.. I also feel that because of RT there are too many spam comments flowing around. Not to mention RT requests that I keep on getting on Fb every day, which at times drives me to frustration.
But let us also not forget its usefulness. There are times you find some good person to follow on twitter, only because someone retweeted their tweets. I found many good blogs and people this way.
All this boils down to one point— Abusing a technology is not good. This is what is being done with the RT feature, leading to spam comments.
Ohh btw, I retweeted this 😛
Totally agree, but retweets are also good for quoting other people. I mean give credit to their brilliant tweet. Also for wise quotes that you possibly believe will help the people you would like to share it with. 🙂
100% agreed with your comments. Cool…
Because of retweet, the spammers are getting increased but even it is helpful too. Having retweet in a way is a good thing also and bad too.