Twitter is experimenting with replacing its sacred retweet button with a ‘share’ button

Twitter has been busy making Facebook-like changes today — adding multiple photo upload and tagging, and experimenting with a profile change on iOS — but it isn’t stopping there. Some users are reporting that the retweet button inside their iOS app has become a ‘share’ button — yes, the sacred retweet button!

CNBC’s Eli Langer first noticed tweets from users affected by the changes, who are seeing a undeniably Facebook-like experience when they try to retweet content.

The actual process of sharing a tweet remains unchanged, but those affected are being asked whether they want to ‘share’ or add comment and share. Here are two different designs users have shared:

As we said when Twitter experimented with removing @ mentions from replies, the company believes that its ‘scaffolding’ puts new users off, and makes it hard to understand and use the service. Twitter’s biggest problem is that existing users don’t want to see the service turn into Facebook, as Gizmodo explains.

Those affected aren’t particularly happy with the change. Twitter has historically been sensitive to user feedback — having reversed some decisions when users don’t agree — and it often tests new tweaks and changes that end up getting discarded, so it remains to be seen whether the retweet will be replaced entirely.

We reached out to Twitter for comment. Twitter declined to comment but did point us to its often-cited blog post about running experiments on the service.

Headline image via DAMIEN MEYER/AFP/Getty Images