RT etiquette

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Permalink Reply by September McCarthy on August 6, 2009 at 9:36am

Thanks for asking this, Debbie. I'm also interested in this question. I'm still a newbie on Twitter, and have only done one RT and that one was because the original came from someone (technical web design) that I thought many of those following me for another topic (genealogy) did not also follow. The subject was related to a problem someone in the genealogy group was having. My belief was/is that there would not be a lot of overlap, besides the fact that I don't yet have that many followers. Another reason I can think of to RT something, even if others have also seen it, is to add something to it and/or emphasize your agreement. With something from a large organization like the BBC, I wouldn't assume that everyone you follow is also following them. I was originally following some large news organizations, but stopped because the quantity of tweets from them overwhelmed the ones from individuals that I was more interested in. I decided that I could go to their home pages to catch up on the news when I wanted.

Permalink Reply by Allyssa on August 7, 2009 at 8:48pm

I don't limit who i RT. If i see something interesting, i share. but that's just me :) as for multiple sources. as far as I understand, you really only need to list the original tweeter, as they are the source. it's nice to include who you saw it from, but the original is most important.

Permalink Reply by Farhan Rehman on August 12, 2009 at 9:56am

Great question Debbie!
For me personally, I like to RT something based purely on whether or not it's interesting to me, and seems like something I'd like to share with everyone who follows me on Twitter.
I like to think of the people following me on Twitter as people who share some basic common interests, and based on my completely subjective thoughts on what I find interesting and useful of the topics we might have in common, I RT stuff based on that. So if I find something that looks really cool, or interesting, or useful, I'll RT it, regardless of who I see it from. Usually, as a rule of thumb, I like to RT using especially the person who's tweet I saw (even if it's already a RT). The idea being, that if you include everyone who's retweeted something in the RT, then they all can see the chain of the RT.. This way people following you can take a look at all the people involved in any of the RT chain and see if they might like to follow any of those people. If you just RT the person who last RT'd, or only the original person who made the first tweet, it loses that value for your followers, as to how you know them (if it wasn't a RT of the original tweet).

Also, I sometimes try to shorten the words in a Tweet, or shorten the original tweet, to try to fit in as many of the retweeters as possible. If people use a tweet, but don't credit me, then that's fine.. usually it's more interesting for me to see the responses to a tweet, rather than just being precious about a tweet being mine.. At the end of the day, the one thing I love about twitter is the way that information gets re-distributed so quickly, and easily ;)

Nice question, I hope that answers it? If not, let me know what more you'd like to know, and I'll see if I can give you more insight, from my own experiences ;)