So when someone uses this retweet feature, does it actually create a status update in the twitter system? In other words, if I retweet your post, and I use the search api and look for tweets posted by me, will that retweet show up as a search result? Is this new retweet feature going to kill a good portion of the tweets that you might find using the search API? I would have to imagine sites like tweetmeme would be interested to know this. Providing an array of the people who have retweeted a particular link would be a very handy API call to have (without requiring user authentication). Do you plan on including that feature if actual posts aren't being created?
On Aug 13, 3:52 pm, Marcel Molina <[email protected]> wrote: > Retweeting has become one of the cultural conventions of the Twitter > experience. It's yet another example of Twitter's users discovering > innovative ways to use the service. We dig it. So soon it's going to > become a natively supported feature on twitter.com. It's looking like > we're only weeks away from being ready to launch it on our end. We > wanted to show the community of platform developers the API we've > cooked up for retweeting so those who want to support it in their > applications would have enough time to have it ready by launch day. We > were planning on exposing a way for developers to create a retweet, > recognize retweets in your timeline and display them distinctively > amongst other tweets. We've also got APIs for several retweet > timelines: retweets you've created, retweets the users you're > following have created, and your tweets that have been retweeted by > others. > > - Creating Retweets > > The API documentation for creating retweets can be found here: > > http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-REST-API-Method%3A-statuses-retweet > > Reminder: Making requests to /statuses/retweet won't work yet as the > feature has not launched. > > - Consuming Retweets in the Timeline > > 1) Retweets in the new home timeline > > We don't want to break existing apps that don't add retweeting support > or create a confusing experience for that app's users. So the > /statuses/friends_timeline API resource will remain unchanged--i.e. > retweets will *not* appear in it. > > For those who *do* want to support retweets, we are adding a new (more > aptly named) /statuses/home_timeline resource. This *will* include > retweets. The /statuses/friends_timeline API resource will continue to > be supported in version 1 of the API. In version 2 it will go away and > be fully replaced by /statuses/home_timeline. > > The API documentation for the home timeline, which includes retweets, > can be found here: > > http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-REST-API-Method%3A-statuses-home_t... > > Take a look at the example payload in the documentation. The original > tweet that was retweeted Thanks appears in the timeline. Notice the > embedded "retweet_details" element. It contains the user who created > the retweet as well as the date and time the retweet occurred. > > 2) Retweeted by me > timelinehttp://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-REST-API-Method%3A-statuses-retwee... > > 3) Retweeted to me > timelinehttp://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-REST-API-Method%3A-statuses-retwee... > > 4) My tweets, > retweetedhttp://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-REST-API-Method%3A-statuses-retwee... > > Reminder: Making requests to any of these timelines won't work yet as > the feature has not launched. > > UI considerations: > ------------------ > > Here are some early draft design mockups of how retweets might appear > on the Twitter website (don't be surprised if > it doesn't look exactly like this). They are presented just as an > example of how retweets can be differentiated visually. > > http://s.twimg.com/retweet-dev-mocks-7-aug-09.png > > Things to note: > > 1) It was important for us that retweets are easily differentiated > visually from regular tweets. If someone you follow retweets a tweet, > the original tweet will appear in your timeline whether you follow the > author of the original tweet or not, just as it currently does when > users use the "RT" convention. Seeing a tweet in your timeline from > someone you don't follow without being told it was shared from someone > you *do* follow could be confusing. So we're encouraging developers to > be mindful of this confusion and make retweets stand out visually from > regular tweets. > > 2) The retweeted tweet shows the username of the first of your > followers to retweet it. If other's subsequently retweet the same > tweet, the retweet should only appear once in a user's timeline > > That's it for now. > > We'll be sending out more updates as we get closer to launching. > > -- > Marcel Molina > Twitter Platform Teamhttp://twitter.com/noradio
