The Twitter retweet feature is now available for all the users. Initially the feature was a surprise and many users objected to it for one main reason:
It was an automatic retweet. It did not allow people to pen down their sentiments alongwith with the RT.
This new feature sends the original tweet to all your followers. It will be a tweet from the author him/herself. Not from you, the retweeter. This also causes some confusion and mayhem, when I all of a sudden have to see a new face or read a totally new twitter user in my twitter stream.
Twitter cofounder, @ev released a blogpost about this new feature which is a pretty good read!
Why Retweet works the way it does
I agree with him, cause I myself have come across some of the problems of the organic retweet. Someone RT'ed a tweet of mine that I had never really sent. So definitely an 'official' feature cannot have such a loophole! Moreover often after many successive RT's the original author's name gets knocked off due to character limit! This can also be prevented with the new retweet feature.
On the other hand......
Organic RT's where people forward cool tweets to their followers by putting an RT in front of the tweet have actually become quite an integral part of twitter communication. Almost inevitably there are long RT'ed chain tweets floating along. Moreover its very easy to send out a funny quip or sentiment related to an RT.
Definitely organic tweeting will continue to be used, simply cause its what the people wanted and what they have devised on their own for effective communication! Since it was useful for all it has become so integral.
This also brings forth one more example of the User Generated effect in social media. Many companies are trying to create a business model from it, but these examples where people make stuff happen with social media cause they want that, are very interesting indeed.
I wonder how Twitter clients like Twhirl, Tweetdeck etc.. will integrate the new RT feature. Hopefully both the RT features will be available to the user, cause each has its own purpose.
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