• Tweet

• Tweet

There is a superb video that explains Twitter in Plain English. But twitter has moved on. Hasn’t it? From being a web application where I could let my mom know that I had my lunch, to probably the biggest INTERNET marketing tool made ever.

Few days back, Twitter released the lists feature and we all liked it. Lists made twitter simpler. Say one wanted to read  cricket news – just a click on your cricket list gives you  a real time peek in to the world of cricket and some trivia too. Similarly, if you want to know about all the social media marketing buzz doing the rounds, all you have to do is to go to your list of social media marketers. Many people even made lists by the name professional and personal, the names being clear enough to explain their usage. So, after having used the lists feature, we all came to the conclusion that Twitter was trying to make our lives simpler and we all started waiting eagerly for the next kick-ass feature by Twitter : RE-TWEET.

I wasnt quite bowled over by this RE-TWEET feature. For all those of you who are already confused by this feature lets delve a little into the feature itself.

So, Now we can follow users in two ways – either we follow just their tweets or their tweets as well as RE-TWEETS. I don’t get the logic here.

So, what happens when one follows a user and his RE-TWEETS?

As explained in the image, all of a sudden you see a complete stranger on your wall (Twitter does explain this through a tip), because she has been retweeted by someone who you follow (and by default, you follow their retweets too). In a sense, it is competing with the Facebook‘s suggest Friends feature in a way that is much more intelligent and viral. A big thumbs up from the social media marketers to twitter for making it even more engaging, networking wise atleast.

So what happened to RT @ArchieIndian thing?

Well you don’t have to type all that now. Just a click and you are done. A big invite for  spammers to just click the RETWEET button and increase their followers. There used to be people, the authentic ones, who would add their own thoughts in their RETWEETS. The RETWEET feature on Twitter doesn’t seem to help these authentic people. It seems to be more helpful for the so called “Viral Marketers”. In a way that is quite disappointing.

So What is this new Retweets Filter that we see on the right side?

The RETWEETS filter consists of three tabs.

• Retweets by people you follow.

• Retweets  by you.

• And of course, be proud, you got Retweeted too.

This is all that I was able to understand about the Retweet feature.

So, what does this Retweet feature mean for different people?

• For a “Viral Marketing” Social Media Person: Tweet Stuff and get it Re-tweeted by your whole team. Your Tweet will weigh high when the Influencing capabilities of your tweet are analyzed. Also, it takes no effort for you to Retweet. So, keep re-tweeting and trying to get followers. But beware, last time when you went to a 45 year old CEO and tried to explain Twitter(to sell social media), you struggled a lot( In India). Now with this complex RETWEET coming up, get you presentations right. Also don’t forget to send it over to me, as I will find it very tough to explain this to my uncles.
• For a Spammer: Great for you guys. Twitter has accepted that there are more spammers on Twitter than real people. Every person whose profile you come across, is either a social media evangelist or a viral marketer and of course a spammer.
• For a Twitter fan: It is upsetting. We didn’t expect the re tweet feature to come up like this. We wanted it to be the way, TweetDeck had it. Ain’t it? Adding our own stuff, putting in our own views and then re- tweeting. Actually for us Twitter fans, the old RT @ArchieIndian still works.
• For the coders who have been working on sentiment analysis, influence weighing and brand reputation measurement: While you had started analysing the importance of someone being on many lists and how it effects your weights in “the neural net bases sentiment analysis algorithm”, here comes another headache for you. You had been wondering how to know the importance of a tweet, so here comes a clean API which tell you the exact number of RE-TWEETS and the people who re-tweeted. Remain agile in you development process, Twitter may have more coming.

All said and done, what is our take on ReTweet?

We like the simple Twitter for sure, and not this complex twitter meant for marketers and for that matter the spammers. If Twitter thinks business like this, to engage the developers more and more into sentiment analysis and something as beautiful as a RETWEET so very objective, the day isn’t far when Twitter Marketers will talk with Marketers and BOTS. (Twitter visitors have actually declined in October 2008) .

I liked  Twitter in its simplest form, the one through which my mom knew 1600 kms away that I had my breakfast on time, even if I did not call her. Where I retweeted my freind @chuck_gopal because, I loved the cricket trivia put forward by him.

We are next expecting Twitter to come up with “Comments on Tweets” feature. That will be fun. Facebook may take a note.

For social media help, please get in touch with Aditya Prakash and Vikash Kumar on twitter.

You can also email them here and here.

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