DISQUS

shaunbwilson · 11 months ago

My best guess is that "via" carries over from http://tumblr.com where many posts are simply "reblogging" someone else. (See: http://shaunbwilson.tumblr.com/) Want to make enemies on Tumblr? Remove the link giving someone credit for posting it first. :o)

Tumblr automatically adds (via username) anytime you use their "reblog" link.

SEONonsense · 11 months ago

Tweetie automatically does the (via @...) version of the RT, thus it's new popularity.

The good news is that Twitter has in fact started catching these, so it will be fine.

Justin Schmidt · 11 months ago

Twitter is still the Wild Wild West for sure. I still think the best format is: RT @username tweet. Keep it nice and short, ya know?

ebrenner · 11 months ago

As it stood, it was too long to RT. So I edited it down to:

RT @readandbreathe: Congratulations to Neil Gaiman for winning the Newbery Award for "The Graveyard Book".

I imparted the information I wanted, though w/o readandbreathe's recommendation. That to me is OK. No meaning change, message delivered.

Roo · 11 months ago

I don't like the use of Via at all, don't twitter use this anyway to denote what app you are using to send the tweet?
As for Retweeting, I rarely see R/T mainly RT, why use an extra character when they are limited?
You don;t mention # and you should, many people I have seen use the hash instead of the @ when retweeting, when as far as I know it's a search tag isn;t it?

One final thing - Why don;t you have an option to add your twitter ID here when commenting? Darren Rowse's Twitip blog uses this feature. Now I have to decide whether to put my website or twitter id here!

Matt · 11 months ago

I find rather funny that someone wants to tell me how I should be using my Twitter account.

Conformity enforcement. Great.

Beatriz Alemar · 11 months ago

Brian,

Yay! Good for you! We needed a format. And, I for one also don't like the via. RT is short and sweet! Maybe someone should send this to the developers of the Twitter applications... Hmm.

Brettthewinemaestro · 11 months ago

I believe that the retweet statistics do not recognise a retweet unless it starts: 'RT @theoriginaltweeter'. So it's a good idea to add comments at the end, possibly punctuated. Your blog was very useful advice and not conformity enforcement. Thanks!

benhedrington · 11 months ago

Hi Brian,

Thanks for putting this out and explaining it to the masses. I am trying to visualize trends and extract information from retweets with my http://www.retweetradar.com project. Check it out and send any feedback my way http://twitter.com/benhedrington or http://buildcontext.com.

Thanks,
-Ben Hedrington

LoneWolf · 11 months ago

Thanks for a great article Brian. Now I know why I haven't been able to figure out the proper way to RT -- there isn't one ... yet!

I like the [] and <- conventions -- it reminds me of C++ even though the arrow points the wrong way.

Jon-Mikel Bailey · 11 months ago

Great tips, thanks!

Flangel66 · 11 months ago

If I'm gonna comment, I prefer to wrap the actual retweet in quotation marks, then add my comment after.
Like:

RT @briancarter "Check out my blog about retweeting." Do it, it's good.