Friday, August 14, 2009

Project Retweet: The End of RTs as We Know Them?

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Image by Shane Fullwood via Flickr

by Jennifer Van Grove

Today’s big news is that Twitter (Twitter) has just announced phase one of Project Retweet, their program to formalize the retweeting movement on Twitter. They’re opening up the flood gates so that developers can tap into the four new APIs and update their applications, or build new ones, in preparation for the official release, which is expected to happen in just a few weeks.

We’re definitely excited to see Twitter embrace the art of retweeting and try to support it. In fact, it reminds us of Twitter’s early days, prior to the official support of mentions. The original version of Twitter did not include a formal way for Twitterers to respond to others’ tweets, so users took it upon themselves to copy a BBS-style reply format and add an @ symbol in front of a username, and replies were born. Twitter eventually caught on to the reply movement, making replies a very real part of the Twitter ecosystem.

Project Retweet: The End of RTs as We Know Them?

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