Guy Kawasaki feels the need to apologize for his practice of repeating tweets since this goes against the spirit of the early days of Twitter. He has some interesting charts showing the effectiveness of repeating tweets. Given this, he is in no way repentant. We would do well to follow his example.
As he points out, Twitter now is a very different online space from what it was in the early days. Then one would send the word to a few friends on what was happening in your neck of the woods.
Now the Twitter-scape is a rushing torrent of tweets and it is very much a matter of hit-or-miss whether you will see the tweets of your friends when so much else is going on. Twitter continues to see exponential growth so this problem will get worse as time goes on.
Given this, we should all find Guy Kawasaki’s approach one that we can adopt without qualms. The tweets should of course be worth repeating and the repetition should not be too often nor for too long. However in a world that has got used to the multiple appearances of television ads, sometimes within minutes, repeated tweets should not be viewed askance. Indeed it will still be true that most people will not see any of them or possible one or two occurrences. That can hardly be described as overkill.
Repeating tweets is par for the course on Twitter. It only makes sense to retweet because you are sharing what you choose as valuable information, and you are crediting the source of the tweet. I usually discriminate and try to find the original source because sometimes a retweet can contain a thread of 3 or 4 tweeters whereas the true credit should just go to the first tweeter.
by the way, you can follow me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/brianfidler
will that get through?
I think that there’s nothing wrong with it. So long as the tweets you repeat make sense, non offensive and informative.
Re tweeting for up to trice is still acceptable.
“The tweets should of course be worth repeating and the repetition should not be too often nor for too long.” – I would say that people really need to stick by this rule.
Twitter is setting too much of rules day after day. It’s very hard for us to follow all the rules. Hence, as long as we didn’t against the rules too frequently, it’s OK to get it done once in awhile…
My personal view is that repeating tweets just cloggs up the internet, although i understand why people want to do it because they want to make sure their voice is heard.
Would be great if Twitter could add a checkbox for when following someone, that indicates a higher level of followers….example…if I could checkbox those that I actually know and want to read over those that I’m interested in but don’t know personally or don’t want to watch everything they chat about….those that I’ve checkboxed would have a ‘weighting’ of stickiness to my page so I’d have a better chance of seeing what they’re posting.
well twitter has change a lot … its grown alot, and its very usefull.. i just started using twitter and its amazing .. and i dont have a problem with the retweets.. well i had no problem with it so far..
So sad that everything in this internet is becoming so spammy and non qualitative….Is there a solution for this ….I have doubts…Google indexes billions of pages but if you go to 2nd page of google for any search performed all will be crap…Twitter is becoming like that ….so sad
Thanks
We can repeat tweets i think, twitter doesn’t care about twitter flooding issues.
I think that this is actually a tough moral issue. On the one hand there are clear and obvious positive results from repeating tweets, from a business standpoint, and on the other hand you are being pretty spammy from the perspective of your followers. It’s like if you called your friends 4 times a day to tell them the same thing. They’d get very annoyed and would certainly ask you to stop.
I would agree with you if you have a short list of followers, who all tended to follow few people. In reality you’re dealing with a low-probability event when one of your followers spots one of your tweets. Most of your tweets will not be seen by any of your followers. Some followers may see one of the tweets. The odds that they see more than one are pretty minimal.
As you said, as Twitter gets bigger and bigger, it will continue to evolve. Into what is anyone’s guess. I personally don’t use it much, or see the purpose of it. But that’s me.
I have a confession… I do the same. Repeating tweets is pretty common for those of us using Twitter. It only makes sense to retweet because you are sharing what you think is valuable and worthy of sharing. I think its okay because you’re giving credit where credit is due and not stealing someone elsees content. The RT is a great way to share and provide value for everyone.
Repeating tweets sound stupid and I wouldn’t do it. On the other hand I only have few followers and I only follow few people so it would be stupid to get those same few tweets over and over again.
I think that repeating tweets is important exactly because of the their big number. That’s how the more important ones can get through the mess.