I've spent eleven days of reTweet contemplation and these thoughts percolated up:
1. twitter as a phenomena has been driven bottom up by the users 2. forcing new paradigms on our users will result in general unhappiness 3. presenting new paradigms as options to our users will allow happy migration Therefore, May I present to you, VART's : Value Added ReTweets. OK that's a stinky name but I see the value of allowing users to do the instant, no-thought-required new-style RT as well as the old- fashioned edit, trim, comment and send. I think it will take a while for users to grok that the auto retweet method preserves authorship, and a good UI will tag it as such and allow the value of the new api to be perceived. Maybe an additional parameter to statuses/update that this is indeed what's going on? @twittelator / http://stone.com On Aug 13, 2:52 pm, Marcel Molina <mar...@twitter.com> 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
