In a word--Twitter (140 Characters--Part 3 of Coffee Party Guide to Twitter)

[neonvincent]

New Users guide to Twitter: Part III More on retweets

In my last installment, I mentioned manual retweets as a way to add tags that the original tweeter forgot. Steven Dorst (@sjdorst on Twitter) replied to me that there was another reason to use manual retweeting. Here's his response, reproduced with his permission:

There is a much more important reason to retweet manually: To create a conversation with context included.

The official "Retweet" doesn't allow you to add your own thoughts, an RT does - although your addition usually must be VERY short. A reply that you have to edit to fit 140 characters should have "MT" instead of "RT".

Twitter's official Retweet, IMHO, turned Twitter towards being an echo chamber, rather than what, in some cases, is a fascinating conversation.

Personally, I use RT (or its cousin MT) when I want to add my own reaction, or when I want my followers to know it came from me.

You see, that's the 2nd problem with the "official" retweet - my followers don't know (without looking at the very fine print) that I am the person calling it to their attention! The Avatar they see is the original tweeter's, not mine.

Thank you Steven, that was valuable advice.

(Note: MT = Modified tweet. This means the tweet you're looking at is a paraphrase of a tweet originally written by someone else. Source: Business Insider)

Speaking of the "fine print" that Steven mentioned, Twitter allows multiple ways to find out who has been retweeting and what they are retweeting.

First, when a retweet appears in your timeline (the list of most recent posts on your home page from the accounts you are following), the name of the retweeter that brought that post to your attention appears to the right of the name of the original tweeter, just after the retweet symbol. That's Steven's "fine print."

Second, you can use the Retweets menu at the top of the home page. There you can review which tweets you have retweeted, what posts the people you are following have retweeted, and, most importantly, which of your tweets others have seen fit to propagate.

Finally, you can simply mouse over an individual tweet on your timeline, just as you would to make the "Favorite, Retweet, Reply" menu visible. A small arrow icon will appear in the upper right hand corner of the tweet. Click on that arrow and you will be able to find out all kinds of information about that tweet. First, you'll see who has been retweeting it. Second, you'll see the responses to it. If it's part of a conversation, you'll be able to read the conversation. Finally, Twitter will provide you with the most recent tweets from any accounts being mentioned, along with tweets with any hashtags being used and tweets that contain distinctive phrases used in the tweet. It's amazing the vast amount of information attached to 140 or fewer characters!

Stay tuned for the next installment in which I will tackle more topics to make your Twitter experience more fun and useful.

If you want to learn more in the meantime, Mashable has an online guidebook to Twitter.