(*As always, you can click the images to see bigger ones!*)

Alright folks, Twitter launched beta testing for their new “Retweet” (RT) feature. I have it and here are my thoughts at a first glance:-

• The Ease of RTing – YAY

I love it. You don’t have to do a thing, hit “Retweet” and you are good to go.

• The Ease of the Retweet is a Pain in the Backside! – NAY

So when you retweet something it shows up “as is” on your main stream of your page. That’s all fine and dandy, except it’s what I like to call an “image” of the original tweet. It’s robotic and goes against all that is holy in social media.

What?

Well, what I mean by that is I can’t edit, shorten or even add my own point-of-view (POV) to the retweeted tweet. This feature takes away all personal interaction.

I don’t like that. Usually, at least 8 out of 10 times, when I retweet something it’s because I like it, read it and I have something to say about it.

For example, if I were to RT this post, pretending someone else wrote it, I would want to say,

“Interesting list ~> RT @SashaHalima Twitter’s New Retweet Feature: Yay or Nay? – http://tr.im/Fi7N“

I cannot do that the way it is currently set up.

It will actually retweet like this, “RT @SashaHalima Twitter’s New Retweet Feature: Yay or Nay? – http://tr.im/Fi7N”

• It Counts! That’s pretty cool! – YAY

After you have retweeted someone else’s post, Twitter keeps track of the original tweet. This is only beneficial to you, and no one else, in all honesty. It helps you keep track of your message.

However, keep in mind that it monitors tweets not links. That means that if you tweet the same link or message more than once, you will have to track how many times each was retweeted, or go into your website’s measurement tool to see how many incoming links came in from Twitter.

• Who the Bloody Hell Are You and WHY Are You in My Feed??? – Major NAY!

No offense to Mr. @ChrisVoss up there, but I don’t know who you are and frankly, right now, I don’t care too. By no fault of your own, of course, but my feed is maintained, cleaned and managed by ME and only ME.

I loathe, and I mean loathe with a passion, this feature.

Strangers are clogging up my feed and I don’t care who they are friends with that I know — get this straight, it simply is NOT okay. Period.

I did not ever choose for anyone except the people I follow to be included in my feed. I follow these people specifically because I use Twitter as my own personal pseudo-RSS feed that gives me the information I want, how and when I want it.

By tossing in strangers to my feed, this upsets the purpose of why my feed is tailored the way it is to me. If I wanted to follow these other people, I would.

I would rather stick to an application like Seesmic or Tweet Deck, where my feed is not clogged, until this is straightened out.

• No, I Do NOT Want to Hide You. I Want You To Go Away!!! – NAY

Twitter gives you the option to “hide” tweets from people you do not follow.  That sounds great, except you know what the problem is? What if, by some luck of the draw, I end up liking this stranger two months down the road and choose to actually follow him. And what if also, I don’t remember hiding him away.

Then what am I supposed to do?

My answer to this problem?

KEEP THE STRANGERS AWAY. Simple. (See above)

• Aren’t Retweets in My Timeline Anyway? – 50/50

Now this is something I do not understand.

If I’m following a person, then their tweets will show up in my feed regardless of whether they are original tweets or retweets. Therefore, what is the point of this?

The only connection I can gather is that this relates directly to the “Retweets by You and # Others” feature. Basically, if someone I am following retweets something, I can see what they retweeted and how many times it has also been retweeted by other people.

~*~

Overall View:-

Dear Twitter,

I think you have your work cut out for you.

My advice: keep it simple. It’s what you are known for and excel at.

• Allow me to retweet other people’s tweets similarly to how Tweet Deck, Seesmic Desktop and other similar applications allow me too. I want to be able to add my own thoughts into the tweets to share my POV with my followers.

• Keep the strangers out of my feed. Your mummy and my mummy both told us when we were kiddies that we weren’t supposed to talk to strangers, so I would really like to know why you are clogging up my feed with them?

• The “hide” feature for strangers — just get rid of it. Getting rid of strangers all together eliminates this issue. End of story.

• If the “who also RTed this post” feature needs to be kept. I suggest that it is kept AWAY from my main feed and in it’s own individual tab, elsewhere. That way the feature is still available, and my news feed is clean, clear and just the way I have always had it.
  

The one and only thing I really wanted to see out of your retweet feature? … was to retweet normally.

That’s it. Literally. I kid you not.

As for the “counts” on how many people retweeted a tweet? Sure, keep it, why not. It’s pretty nifty!

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Me xx.

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Sasha Muradali runs the ‘Little Pink Book’ . She holds a B.S. in Public Relations from the University of Florida (’07) and an M.A. in International Administration from the University of Miami(’08). She loves Twitter and all things social media, so you should find her @SashaHalima or get a copy of the ‘Little Pink Book’ delivered to your Kindle.

Copyright © 2009 Sasha H. Muradali. All Rights Reserved.