Capital “RT†stands for Retweeting
“RT” stands for Re-Tweeting. That is when you take someone else’s tweet and send it off as your tweet plus the added acknowledging RT @username to the original sender.
It was not until recently that the web version of Twitter added a “Retweet” button.
Once you click the Retweet button, it copies the tweet and adds the original sender. I miss the opportunity to add anything additional to the RT though. That is a function that I enjoy while using TweetDeck.
A comment, from @studymentor left on a previous post “So, you want to be followed” made me think about the reasons why I retweet?
ReTweets must some value in one way or another, since there are even plugins that will add a button to each of you blog posts showing how often it has been retweeted and make it easy to directly retweet the link from within the post.
Here are some of my reasons for retweeting:
- helping spread the word across many networks (spiderweb effect)
- acknowledging a good tweet
- documenting my own bread crumbs (creating a summary) of where I have been and learned.
- to put an answer of mine into context, so others can follow back to the original question and also search for responses to it
Well, you will have guessed by now, I sent that same question on to my Twitter network. Here are some of the responses.
Please make YOUR case for RT on twitter by adding a comment in the section below, in an effort to help others understand the reasoning behind it.
I RT when I read a tweet that makes me laugh, think in a different way, or just makes me feel good!
I retweet sometimes, because people seem to appreciate it, and to show that I’ve found something useful or interesting. But often, I do not, because my list of followers is paltry compared to the heavyweights from whom I get these resources. I have doubted that I have many followers that are not already getting the same tweets.
Sometimes I retweet having in mind some colleagues who are followers and new to Twitter, but many of them haven’t actually gotten into the Twitter habit yet.
I retweet to give amplification.