Twitter Changing How Retweets Work

According a post by Biz Stone on the Twitter blog, changes are coming soon to how we Retweet on Twitter.

Biz writes that they are officially adopting the concept of the retweet into the Twitter platform and twitter.com. The plan is add a retweet button to twitter.com. It seems like the right move, but the execution might upset the apple cart.

Retweets would no longer show up in your timeline in the familiar “RT @JeffParsons” designation. Now you will see the avatar and username of the person being retweeted in your timeline, even if you don’t follow them. It will be designated with “retweeted by” to show the person you follow who sent the retweet.  Confusing? Here’s a sketch that Biz posted on the Twitter blog that gives you a better idea of how it will look on twitter.com

Gone will be the use of RT to retweet. This probably will help those on Twitter who are new or casual users, but what about Twitter’s power users who have become so accustomed to seeing the RT designation in their timelines? How will Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck deal with this new method of retweeting?

The concept is still being worked out and shared with the developer community so they can start devising ways to work it into their efforts, but look for a full launch in a few weeks.

We’ll discuss this change more on the Word On The Tweet Podcast recording this Sunday at 8:30 and released the following day, but in the meantime feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.