Last month Twitter launched its new retweet feature in order to eliminate confusion and authenticate user quotes (as the copy & paste method was being exploited by spammers).
Although the new retweet feature solved the latter issue, it led to more confusion in the twittersphere as many users became upset at “seeing new faces” in their tweet stream.
The retweet feature is so unpopular that most iPhone Twitter apps have (thus far) delayed implementing it, save two–Tweetie and Twittelator Pro.
While Twitter went into a preemptive PR mode to justify the new retweet feature, they may want to check out how Tweetie and Twittelator handle retweets instead.
Instead of showing a random strangers face when a friend retweets something interesting to the world, both iPhone apps instead show your friend’s face alongside the retweeted person’s face.
This not only eliminates confusion, but helps kill off the old school method of retweeting which needs to die the cyber death (as I’m tired of spammers retweeting quotes “from me” online).
Why Twitter has not yet done this has always puzzled me, but hopefully they will considering implementing something like this soon (as in today).
