Retweets get ‘official’ status. Twitter building them into the platform.

Twitter has announced that it will officially be integrating retweets into the Twitter platform, making them integral elements of the Twitter elements and as equally significant as replies and favoriting.

It’s not quite ready yet, but when launched, users will be able to hide retweets from a particular user and developers will be able to easily integrate the action into their applications. This should help retweets become more common place and an essential part of the twitter experience.

Twitter co-found @Biz explains:

“We’re still working out the final details, but this sketch gives you the basic idea. Let’s say you follow @jessverr, @biz (that’s me), and @gregpass but you don’t follow @ev. However, I do follow @ev and the birth of his baby boy was so momentous that I retweeted it to all my followers.

Imagine that my simple sketch is your Twitter timeline. You’d see @ev‘s tweet even though you don’t follow him because you follow me and I really wanted you to have the information that I have. (The star, reply, and retweet options only show up when you hover over a row on Twitter.com which is why you don’t see them all the time.) Also, if you find my retweets annoying, then you’ll be able to turn them off.”

The best way to see how the retweets will affect the Twitter experience is by taking a look at a few draft designs:

Screenshot via TC