RTFail Manifesto: Use New Retweets, We Unfollow You!
At the end of November, Twitter came out with a new retweet feature that supposedly solved a number of problems with the usage of retweets (RT) on Twitter; attribution confusion, mangled tweets, redundancy, and untrackability.
It is our stated option that the new RT is service degradation. Why? Because…
- Attribution confusion: While Twitter felt we users were confused by who wrote a RT, we were not. We saw faces we trusted recommending information – the best attribution any tweet author could ask for.
- Mangled and messy: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and where some see mess, we saw art of the Tweet Sculpt – adding our own value to the original tweet to give greater relevance to our followers.
- Redundancy & Noise: For those that have either, you follow too many people. Those of us who live for social media know how to select voices to listen to – ones that only RT value. And by RT’ing the same content, but with new value to each, all RT’s gain value.
- Untrackable: To this we simply say “search”
But above all what galls us the most is the forced RT without commentary or annotation. To rip from our control the ability to add value to a tweet, to give it relevance to our followers – to make it ours. For this there is no excuse. Not for its implementation nor usage.
So we hereby issue the #RTFail Manifesto:
That’s right – if we follow you, and you use the auto RT function 3 times (you will be warned) then you’re unfollowed. Love ya, but no exceptions. The new RT’s are Twitter spam, and until they are fixed, they shall be scorned in streams and in apps (looking at you Tweetie2).
For those that agree – join us in the #RTFail Manifesto in these simple ways:
- Get at RTFail Twibbon
- Issue your own #RTFail Manifesto warnings
- And of course, RT the #RTFail Manifesto, but only with a classic RT:
-your snippet here- RT Join in the #RTFail Manifesto – Bring Back the RT! http://bit.ly/RTFail
We the Twitter RT’ers