Twitter: An oddity about retweeting

Like many people, I find something I like or think significant and click on "Retweet". All good. However, rightly or wrongly in trying to exploit the potential of this social media, I will send out the same tweets several times over the day in an effort to catch a different audience. I noted though that Twitter doesn't allow you to retweet the same thing twice in what I believe is a twenty-four period. So to get around this restriction, I go back and delete my original tweet then tweet exactly the same thing. Works like a charm.

Yes, works like a charm except for one important consideration. If anybody has retweeted me, when I delete my original tweet, I also delete their retweet. Somehow their retweet is connected directly to my original tweet so if I delete it, both things disappear.

I started noticing though that others do not retweet in the conventional sense. Instead of clicking on Retweet, they copy and paste my tweet. Note the following

My original tweet

Sheila Kelley: Let's Get Naked: TED Talk http://bit.ly/YGL3Ef #WomensIssues #WomensRights #SexualFreedom #LetsGetNaked #TEDTalks

The special retweet

RT @wqbelle: Sheila Kelley: Let's Get Naked: TED Talk http://bit.ly/YGL3Ef #WomensIssues #WomensRights #SexualFreedom #LetsGetNaked...

See the difference? The user has copied and pasted my tweet then prefaced it with "RT" and my Twitter name. If I delete my original tweet, their retweet does not disappear. Their tweet is now an independent tweet separate from mine.

I researched this and discovered Twitter's official Help (see References) describes the above the method but still recommends using their own Retweet feature. They do not mention what I discovered: deleting the original tweet deletes linked retweets. They also mention the limit of 140 characters and as you can see with the above example, the copier must truncate my tweet since the "RT @wqbelle: " adds 13 characters to my original tweet.

Did you know?
You are limited to 1,000 tweets per day but who's going to hit that limit by entering a thousand tweets? However there are smaller limits for semi-hourly limits and yes, I did hit this limit once. I just had to wait an hour then I was able to carry on. Normally I don't go that nuts but every once in a while I'm hot hot hot. Well, hot meaning in sending out tweets.

What's the point of tweeting?
Does tweeting do anything? I use Twitter to publicise my blog. Yes, I'll tweet a newspaper article or a YouTube video or something funny I find, but for the most part it's just me using another means of bringing people to my writing. I am a legend in my own mind. Does it work?

When I tweet I can see the pageviews on my blog go up. That's all I can say. My blog isn't all that popular so this is all relative but yes, when I tweet I do see more hits on my pages. Now I need to do some more detailed analysis with something like Google Analytics to find out if people are actually staying on a page to read anything but considered my Alexa score isn't all that hot, I'm not the next big thing on the Internet at the moment. Ha ha. No worry about me going viral.

Final Word
The purpose of this was to discuss the difference between Twitter's Retweet function and copying and pasting an entire tweet then prefacing with "RT" and the name of the original sender. The RT method guarantees that your tweet will remain online if the original user, like me, deletes the original tweet in order to repost it during the same 24 hour period.

All the best to all of you in your worlds. Happy retweeting!


References

Twitter: How to Retweet a Tweet

Twitter: FAQs About Retweets (RT)

Twitter: About Twitter Limits (Update, API, DM, and Following)

Wikipedia: Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets".

It was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 500 million registered users as of 2012, generating over 340 million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet, and has been described as "the SMS [Short Message Service] of the Internet." Unregistered users can read tweets, while registered users can post tweets through the website interface, SMS, or a range of apps for mobile devices.

Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco, with additional servers and offices in New York City, Boston, and San Antoni

MediaBistor - Nov 1/2012
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram – Social Media Statistics And Facts 2012 [INFOGRAPHIC]
If Twitter was a country, it would be the twelfth largest in the world.

All Twitter - Dec 1/2012
20 Twitter Stats From 2012
1. There were 175 million tweets sent from Twitter every day throughout 2012. (source: Infographics Labs)
6. Top 3 countries on Twitter are the USA at 107 million, Brazil 33 million and Japan at nearly 30 million. (source: Jeff Bullas)
7. The average user follows (or is followed by) 51 people. (source: Diego Basch’s Blog)
9. 32% of all Internet users are using Twitter. (source: Marketing Land)
13. Lady Gaga has 31 million followers, which is the most followed account on Twitter. (source:Socialbakers)
18. 50% of Twitter users are using the social network via mobile. (source: Microsoft tag)

2012-12-27

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