| converged media |

Resources for the modern journalist. From Loose Wire

 

Retweeting

A retweet is to re-post or reTweet of someone else’s Twitter update.

It’s an easy way to spread information and/or to acknowledge a good piece of tweeting (or linking).

This is a standard that evolved independently of Twitter, although Twitter has since adopted its own method of doing it (see below)

Format

There are several formats deemed acceptable that credits the original Twitter user:

You can start off with ‘Retweet’ or ‘RT’ for short and then include the original Twitter user’s username prefixed by the @sign.  This enables the Twitter user to see your tweet (because it will appear in their replies section of their profile) and allows other people following your timeline to visit their profile directly by clicking on the name.

image

Next, you can put the title of the Tweet if there is room and / or put the URL in the Tweet by cutting and pasting it OR by clicking on the Twitter update time (underneath the post) to grab a URL directing users to the Tweet.

Standards

Certain standards have been establised along the way:

  • You can add your own comment, if there’s room
  • If you can, leave in all the RT names that are in there. If you have to remove some, at least leave the original twitterer (the source)
  • You can edit the original tweet so it fits with any comments or RT stuff, but not so it alters the meaning, blurs the line between what is your comment and what is the orginal twitterer’s. Most important, of course, is the original link, if there was one.

Retweeting via the Twitter page

Unfortunately, Twitter has changed the way retweeting works on its website, so if you use Twitter’s website to retweet something, you’ll find you’re not able to add your own comments easily. This is how retweet works in Twitter:

Click on the Retweet button beneath a tweet. Click Yes to confirm:

image

This will appear like this on your timeline:

image

To retweet the old way, you need to select a copy the contacts of a tweet, and then hit reply.

Paste in the text, type RT before the user’s name and then make any adjustments you want before hitting Tweet:

image

Pages

twitter

RSS Loose Wire blog

  • Samsung and phone companies [BBC version] May 19, 2012
    This is a piece I'm recording for the BBC World Service. It's based loosely on my piece about possible limits to Samsung's impressive foray into smartphones.  The interesting thing about covering technology for a living is that while pretty much every business within  the sector  very very different, but all are, or want to be, [...]
  • ZTE confirms security hole in U.S. phone May 18, 2012
    This is a piece I wrote with my colleague Lee Chyen Yee on the ZTE vulnerability.  ZTE Corp, the world's No.4 handset vendor and one of two Chinese companies under U.S. scrutiny over security concerns, said one of its mobile phone models sold in the United States contains a vulnerability that researchers say could allow [...]
  • Facebook can’t take Asian growth for granted May 17, 2012
    A piece I wrote ahead of Facebook's IPO, casting a skeptical eye over assumptions that Asia would continue to be a source of major growth for the company. Even as Facebook fever grips investors ahead of the social networking giant's potential $100 billion-plus initial public offering, its breakneck growth in Asia may be slowing as [...]
  • Podcast: Cameras May 16, 2012
    The BBC World Service Business Daily version of my piece on cameras. (The Business Daily podcast is here. Script is here.) Loose Wireless 120516 To listen to Business Daily on the radio, tune into BBC World Service at the following times, or click here. Australasia: Mon-Fri 0141*, 0741 East Asia: Mon-Fri 0041, 1441 South Asia: [...]
  • Cameras [BBC column] May 9, 2012
    This is the script for a piece I recorded for the BBC World Service. It' s based on a piece I wrote for my employer, Reuters. We always assume that when a new technology comes along it will displace the old. And that tends to be the case. But displace doesn't mean delete, remove, consign [...]
  • Social media stress? There’s an app for that May 8, 2012
    A piece on how one marketing company is capitalizing on what it says is growing stress among social media users.  Nestle, purveyor of the decades-old KitKat snack, has launched an app it says addresses a growing problem among young social media users - giving them a break from the stress of posting updates by doing [...]
  • In a Samsung Galaxy far, far away … will Android still rule? May 3, 2012
    A piece I wrote on potential roadbumps in Samsung's ride to smartphone dominance.  Samsung Electronics is the world's largest smartphone manufacturer and biggest user of Google's Android operating system. And, for some, that's the problem. Samsung's meteoric rise - in the first quarter of 2011 it shipped fewer smartphones than Apple, […]
  • RIM [BBC version] April 24, 2012
    In some ways our world all looks very similar. Prefab coffee and fast food chains, Cars that all look the same. Everyone on Facebook. But what we--and by we I include the people who actually produce and sell these goods and services--don't do a good job of is understanding while the global products may be [...]
  • Outsider Ren pits Huawei against the world April 23, 2012
    A piece I wrote for Reuters with Lee Chyenyee:  (Reuters) – In the 1990s, Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei visited the United States several times, hoping to learn from its leaders of industry about how to turn his Chinese telecoms equipment maker into a global company. On one trip in 1992, in the days before China had credit [...]
  • WhatsApp [BBC commentary] April 17, 2012
    You may remember a time, not too long ago, when to make a long distance phone call you had to go through an operator. You would wait as you could hear her asking another operator for a connection. It was not always successful. A lot depended on the perseverance of the operator--especially when trying to [...]

del.icio.us

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.