11 December 2009

The trouble with retweeting

It bothers me when someone I follow on Twitter says “please retweet”.

Case 1: Someone who follows me also follows the original tweeter. My retweet will just be noise for them.

Case 2: Someone who follows me and isn’t interested in the original tweeter. My retweet will just be noise for them.

Case 3: Someone who follows me who doesn’t follow the original tweeter but would be interested in following them. The retweet is only useful to the extent that it has made this person aware of the original tweeter.

While case 3 is good, a lot of case 1 & 2 noise is going to be generated to achieve it. Surely there are better ways to help people find followees than this.

I think the occasional “this person tweeted something unusually clever or insightful that I want to share” kind of retweet is just fine. “Please retweet”, however, tends to signal my above concerns.

Because it’s just like forwarding e-mail, isn’t it? Occasionally there are times when forwarding an e-mail is exactly the right thing to do. E-mails that were written with the expectation of being forwarded, however, are the one’s that are wasteful.

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