Monday
Nov092009
Why The RT @ Needs To Stay As Is
Monday, November 9, 2009 at 10:13AM
Alex Wilhelm, writer for TheNextWeb and a good friend of mine, recently wrote a post to drop the RT @username when distributing other peoples Tweets to your own Twitter followers. I love Alex and all, but RT's need to stay as is and here is why:
I don't have the time to go searching for new people, I let the people I am currently following find new people for me by paying attention to the people they RT. If I find that RT to be interesting, I will go follow that person and voila, I have made another connection with minimal work.
Most everyone pays more attention to Twitter users such as Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, Tim O' Reilly, Michael Arrington as well as many other tech pundits. If they RT something, or they are RT'ed by one of my followers, I am ten times more likely to pay attention to that person and that tweet rather then say, Alex's RT (sorry).
Give credit where credit is due. If I send out a Tweet, don't pass it off as your own. The same applies to tweeting out a blog post, you didn't write it and if you push it with credit, it makes it look like you wrote it until they click through to the post.
That sounds a bit unfair, doesn't it?
With these benefits (and I am sure there are more) of the RT, why would you want to drop them? Sure, you can argue noise, but most people are not like Alex with 5,000+ followers and a writer for TheNextWeb.
I will give Alex this though, he did later clarify he does not speak for all when he says this, but when you write for a top 100 tech blog that drives thousands of hits a day, you tend to speak for a lot of people, whether you like it or not.
1. RT's Are A Great Way To Discover New People
I don't have the time to go searching for new people, I let the people I am currently following find new people for me by paying attention to the people they RT. If I find that RT to be interesting, I will go follow that person and voila, I have made another connection with minimal work.
2. The Signal Theory
Most everyone pays more attention to Twitter users such as Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, Tim O' Reilly, Michael Arrington as well as many other tech pundits. If they RT something, or they are RT'ed by one of my followers, I am ten times more likely to pay attention to that person and that tweet rather then say, Alex's RT (sorry).
3. I Wrote It, Not You
Give credit where credit is due. If I send out a Tweet, don't pass it off as your own. The same applies to tweeting out a blog post, you didn't write it and if you push it with credit, it makes it look like you wrote it until they click through to the post.
That sounds a bit unfair, doesn't it?
Final Thought
With these benefits (and I am sure there are more) of the RT, why would you want to drop them? Sure, you can argue noise, but most people are not like Alex with 5,000+ followers and a writer for TheNextWeb.
I will give Alex this though, he did later clarify he does not speak for all when he says this, but when you write for a top 100 tech blog that drives thousands of hits a day, you tend to speak for a lot of people, whether you like it or not.
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