[Update: The keen eyes of TNW's readers have spotted the fact that the RT searches seem to be working again. We've contacted Twitter, but as of yet have not heard back from them either confirming or denying.]
Since the first days of Twitter, if you’ve liked something that someone said, it has traditionally been seen as appropriate to Retweet it. You would do that by giving a customary “RT @Username” then pasting their Tweet.
A few months ago, however, we were given an official Retweet function. The issue is that it confuses your timeline a bit, as it shows up as an almost unnoticeable function, and instead looks as if you’re following someone that you might not be. Further, it removes the ability for you to comment inside of the Retweet. So, despite the official function, “RT” has lived on.
Twitter doesn’t seem to be too happy about that, though. It would appear that the site is, in fact, filtering out any Tweet containing the letters RT from searches. Ray’s 2.0 says this:
This seems a bit heavy-handed, to us. Especially when you consider that Twitter never announced the plan to filter these results. Though nobody has ever said that any website was a Democracy, Twitter’s uprising against the RT filter appears to be reaching a furor that might cause the brains behind Twitter to rethink their decision.
We’ll be keeping an eye on things. If I were a betting blogger, I’d place my wager on Twitter addressing the filter as a “coding error” that will soon be “corrected”.
Many thanks to Sam Sethi @ssethi for the heads up.
Thanks for sharing this, I was unaware of it. I tend to share things from within my browser using the Firestatus add-on, which at least in my version does not have an auto Retweet of any kind. I love the ability to pass things on without leaving my browser, and very rarely go to the actual Twitter page to Tweet. Maybe that’s the issue they are trying to force!
Echofon still allows for the ‘classic’ retweet with comment function…. but usually you won’t have many characters left /140 to say anything substantial, lol.
Correcting the ‘coding error’ will probably happen, well, I hope so! Having RTs as read-only officially and the manually done and editable one is the best case. If they choose to separate the two, it would not bother me as long as they don’t completely filter them out.
I like the built-in retweet and the filtering out of retweets. I don’t want to wade through dozens of retweets to figure out who *actually* said something interesting – something that I thought worthy of passing on to my followers.
What Twitter *does* need to do, though, is provide a mechanism for conversations and archiving of conversations. Right now, that’s only possible via hashtag archives in TwapperKeeper, conversations in Twitoaster, chats in Tweetchat, etc. In other words, free websites that are supported out of the goodness of some developer’s heart and not as part of the platform.
The good news is that I think the business platform version of Twitter, which is now in beta, will have some marketing platform functionality that will solve a lot of these problems. If the price is right, I’ll probably subscribe to it even though I’m not exactly a marketer or a business.
From a Twitter employee: Why identical Twitter searches give different results: http://j.mp/9FJzXz
Why did Twitter try to fix something that wasn’t broken to begin with. The traditional RT made it easier to identify Tweets, who the original Tweet was from and who thought enough to endorse it and pass it along to their followers. The new Retweet button sucks in my opinion…
Twitter would rather filter out the RT @ than admit they screwed up a good thing.
I still see traditional RT’s in search results?
I just retweeted something both ways, and the RT (old style) did not show up in a search of the person’s timeline using the search button
The official Twitter app for Android only allows the ‘official’ (rubbish) retweet method. I’m guessing that when Tweetie for iPhone becomes official Twitter app it will also be removed :(
I’m looking at my Twidroid, and it has an option for Retweet with Comment. And I can easily type “RT” and paste in someone’s tweet if I want to take the time. Is it possible you don’t have the updated version (I think the RT w/comment showed up in the last update)?
has anyone checked to see if they have also possibly filtered the use of “via” to any degree?
The new official RT is way better I think. In fact i find the old RT’s really annoying. I don’t find it hard to recognize the new RT’s and can easily see who retweeted who. If you want to comment on it, just retweet it and tweet your comment righ after it. I always lack space to place comments in RT’s anyways.
Think traditional RT people are just grumpy old men ;)
Patrick, people were voicing their opinion here about retweets and I think you have your right to your opinion about retweets too but I don’t think you had the right to attack people’s opinion by calling them grumpy old men.
You’re damn right I’m grumpy. Now get off my lawn!
I just want to be able to choose how I RT.
Glenn / Patrick – not sure where you’re both from but in the UK the phrase ‘Grumpy Old Men’ is a very lighthearted term, it’s not even really an insult.
I for one didn’t take it as an insult, I often refer to myself as a grumpy old man :D (although 30 isn’t THAT old… is it??!)
The “official” auto-RT method doesn’t allow for editing or commentary from the person doing the retweeting. Evidently, Twitter — which already owns your tweets — would also like to tell you how, and when, you can use your own words.
I’m with Justin.
I just checked and the old style standard “RT” are showing up in my searches via the web site: search.twitter.com.
It does appear that the API is blocking old style “RTs”
This isn’t true. At least not now. Simply type RT into the search box right now, and you’ll see plenty of RT@username results. I think you fell for an urban legend.
I’m a fan of the traditional RT. I don’t like or use the new RT function. I don’t care for the /via or (via ____) way as it confuses people on who the actual author is.
I use TweetDeck which lets me edit RTs. I get totally lost trying to use the web Twitter interface.
So, if you follow the link in Dave’s comment above, you’ll find that RT is excluded in searches from your twitter home page, but not from search.twitter.com. Verified this myself.
The new upgrade for Tweetie, which makes it Twitter for iPhone, has the retweet button as one of the default tools at the bottom of the screen. I’ll continue to use the “quote tweet” function, but it’s now going to be a lot easier to mistakenly click on the Twitter-approved retweet button.
Dave’s reply mentions the offical tweet from Twitter that menitons that this functionality has been removed from “integrated search”. What this means is the results from the search box on your profile. I checked search.twitter.com and from the home page search box and they both show RT tweets. They are removed from the search results when using the “integrated search” on your profile.
I wish Twitter would simply enhance their RT button to allow you to insert a comment. Inability to add my thought (which is where I can add value or nuance) is why I only occasionally use the RT button.
@BarbChamberlain
I really have a lot of unanswered questions about this move by Twitter:
1. When was this implemented?
2. Why was it implemented?
3. Why were the customers not consulted?
4. Is this the end, or just the beginning, of trying to distinguish traditional retweets from tweets?
5. Why was it not announced?
See I have a hunch it wasn’t done in isolation.
Also I understand the facts a little better.
The problem manifests itself in
-hashtag searches and
-homepage searchbox searches
and does not manifest itself in
-searches from search.twitter.com
At least for now.
Another “conversation-threading” tool (for Twitter) is: http://bettween.com/
It’s pretty darned effective, easy to use, and goes back in time quite far…farther than I’ve had reason to “test.”
It’s simply “good customer service,” or smart public relations, for Twitter to have notified its “users” that their manual retweets were to be filtered from searches initiated within the main Twitter site (whatever that may include; I’m referring to that which is accessed by interfacing with one’s “Twitter profile page”).
Normally, most service companies would notifiy users of a major change to one of their standard features ~ as searching for retweets has been ~ in order to allow “customers” to make modifications, determine responses, and make choices about use of the service.
For Twitter to simply “disappear” manual retweets from the most-accessed search results is unethical, from a business perspective. Obviously, Twitter management felt that negative financial repercussions might ensue if they “armed the users” with the “bad news.”
There is a big difference between just pushing a “retweet” button and sharing something intentionally with a few characters of your own commentary. I still use and love the old-school RT style that lives on (for now) in Hootsuite.
I use tweetdeck most of the time and the RT feature there allows me to add a comment or two – I don’t know why twitter doesn’t want to go that route.
Regardless is the new retweet function is better as the ‘old’ one, I believe it is fundamentally wrong to dictate to your users what they can and can’t do. If twitter is going through with this, it is more and more becoming like facebook…
I think it’s great. When I search, I don’t want to see 50 tweets in a row that are all identical. This way, you only see the original, and that’s all that matters.
Any 21st century business people should know that the key to success is listening to your customers and evolving to fit their needs and desires.
Twitter is working like a classic hierarchical mid 20th century top-down corporation which attempts to dictate to its customers instead of asking them.
The retweet, which was developed entirely by Twitter’s customers, and which had nothing whatsoever to do with Twitter’s plan — the provision of “updates” on one’s “timeline” to inform one’s “friends” as to one’s “status” at any given moment — is the thing that has made Twitter powerful.
And Twitter is bound to destroy the very thing that made it what it is.
Business school students are going to have a rip roaring time dissecting the fall of Twitter.
“Business school students are going to have a rip roaring time dissecting the fall of Twitter.”
I think that’s premature. As I noted above, the key distinction is between “customer service” and “user relations”. Twitter’s *customers* are those who *pay* for Firehose access, Promoted Tweets, and any other services involved in partnerships that have yet to be disclosed.
Has this since been corrected? A search of “RT @username” with several different usernames works fine for me.
Anyone who’s worried about being about to RT the way they want to should totally ask twitter for a refund.
What’s that? It’s a free service?
I prefer the official Retweet function. If people want to add their own wit to a situation they can make their own Tweet about it, or Retweet what they saw that inspired them.
The benefit of weeding manual RTs out of the search results is that you can get a broader look at what’s being said about a topic without having to wade through dozens, hundreds, or thousands of manual RTs. Removing manual RTs from the search results would help Twitter fulfill its goal of letting you know what’s happening ‘right now’ more effectively.