Tweet & Retweet Are Brothers. If tweet jumped off the bridge…

November 8, 2009 | Filed Under Social Media 

Twitter has recently launched it’s newest “improvement” (in beta mode to a select few) to help aid the invaluable power of retweeting. After playing with the new lists feature twitter had launched not too long ago, I was kind of excited to see what other shinny new buttons twitter had added. It didn’t take long for me to see that this new retweet feature was something I didn’t much care for. My 3 biggest complaints:

You can’t edit the tweets: I’ve never been one to simply copy, past, and throw a “RT” in front of it all. Many of my close peers know that I’m not big on retweeting things simply because I’m asked me to. If it’s not valuable content then it needs to disappear. Having the ability to add my own thoughts or even a “LOL” lets my followers know why and sometimes what, I am retweeting.

It steals my thunder: It’s not 100% clear who’s retweeting what anymore. The power of peer to peer review and approval has gone out the window. I think. The usability on it is a bit confusing. My initial attraction to twitter was how simple it was; allowing me to me communicate with a large group of friends and peers without a whole lot of “noise”. Does this sound at all familiar? Anyone remember how myspace started out?

And now the feature I despise the most…

ZOMG, STRANGERS: All of a sudden, my stream has been invaded by people I don’t follow. There are so many things wrong with this, I don’t even know where to begin. I hate to quote the Grinch, what with his bad taste in shoes and whatnot but, “That’s one thing I hate! All the noise, noise, noise, noise!”

Oh my. When I hear “improvements” my instant reaction is to cringe. Myspace’s slow death has proven that change doesn’t always mean for the better. Sometimes the, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” saying really does ring try and the overall consensus of the twittersphere pretty much mirrors my own personal distaste. Now I for one, am all about improving the usability of a powerhouse tool like twitter but somethings are better left undisturbed.

Like my own personal stream. Thanks.

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