There has been a lot of angst in the Twitter community about the new retweet feature ever since Twitter rolled out the specs to its developer community. Many people didn't even see the need for a feature that can be so easily subverted. But Twitter obviously saw a demand for verifiable retweets.

This brings us to today when Twitter in their fallible wisdom decided to make me (specifically the @TheDisneyBlog account) an early adopter. I wonder if I got this honor because I previously spoke out against the idea.

In any event, here are a few screen shots of how it all works.

This is what you see when you log in after you've been selected to use the new feature.


When you rest your cursor over the Retweet link or icon this bubble now pops up.

The other thing that has been added is a new 'Retweet' option in the right column


Clicking it takes you to a new page with three tabs. Retweets by others appears to be popular retweets from other users that you may or may not be following. Retweets by you is self-explanatory. As is, I assume, Your tweets, retweeted.


I did notice that one of the retweets I tried appeared in my tweetstream, while the other one didn't. Not sure if that is a feature or a bug.

Now that I've tried the feature, I want to take back my earlier comments. I like it. You can take it or leave it as a user; but if you do use it, I think it will become immensely powerful for finding new people to follow as well as knowing what you're reading is an authentic retweet. If you have to comment on a person's tweet, you can still retweet the old fashioned way, excerpt it, shorten it, whatever.


One shortcoming I see is that like lists this takes the user off the main page of twitter into a new page. So they're missing out on the primary stream while these secondary streams run past them. It would be nice if there was some way it could all track on one page. But I suspect some developer will figure that out shortly.

I suspect this is going to kick up the volume of retweets as authenticity will add to their currency. Someone who is retweeted a lot will gain more followers even faster. And your original content, if worthy, can travel a lot farther via the Retweets by others tab.